Mathijs Verstraete

Videogames in therapy: a therapist's perspective

This paper describes a user and task analysis that was conducted in order to examine the role of therapists in the use of video games in therapy. The results show that video games were used often, but improvements could be made to make them more effective for the therapist. From these results recommendations for video game design were derived. Recommendations include that a therapeutic video game should be easy to startup and configure, should allow the therapist to support a patient during play, and should support the therapist in tracking a patients performance.

Semiotic analysis of multi-touch interface design: The MuTable case study

Although multi-touch applications and user interfaces have become increasingly common in the last few years, there is no agreed-upon multi-touch user interface language yet. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the design of multi-touch user interfaces, this paper presents semiotic analysis of multi-touch applications as an interesting approach to gain deeper understanding of the way users use and understand multi-touch interfaces. In a case study example, user tests of a multi-touch tabletop application platform called MuTable are analysed with the Communicability Evaluation Method to evaluate to what extent users understand the intended messages (e.g., cues about interaction and functionality) the MuTable platform communicates. The semiotic analysis of this case study shows that although multi-touch interfaces can facilitate user exploration, the lack of well-known standards in multi-touch interface design and in the use of gestures makes the user interface difficult to use and interpret. This conclusion points to the importance of the elusive balance between letting users explore multi-touch systems on their own on one hand, and guiding users, explaining how to use and interpret the user interface, on the other.

Video games in therapy: a therapist's perspective

This paper describes a user and task analysis, complemented with participatory design sessions, conducted to examine the role of therapists in the use of video games in therapy. The results show that video games were used often, but improvements could be made to make them more effective for the therapist. From these results, design recommendations for video games were derived. Recommendations include that a therapeutic video game should be easy to start–up and configure, yet support calibration and adaptation for a wide variety of impairments, should allow the therapist to support a patient during play and should support the therapist in tracking a patients performance and reporting on his performance.

Comparing user interaction with low and high fidelity prototypes of tabletop surfaces

This paper describes a comparative study between the usage of low-fidelity and a high-fidelity prototyping for the creation of multi-user multi-touch interfaces. The multi-touch interface presented in this paper allows users to collaboratively search for existing multimedia content, create new compositions with this content, and finally integrate it in a layout for presenting it. The study we conducted consists of a series of parallel user tests using both low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes to inform the design of the multi-touch interface. Based on a comparison of the two test sessions, we found that one should be cautious in generalising high-level user interactions from a low towards a high-fidelity prototype. However, the low-fidelity prototype approach presented proved to be very valuable to generate design ideas concerning both high and low-level user interactions on a multi-touch tabletop.

Multi-user multi-touch setups for collaborative learning in an educational setting

In educational settings, current digital technologies often work counter-productively because people using them with separation and isolation. This paper describes a set of multi-touch multimedia interaction applications that were especially designed to enhance collaboration between users. We present the underlying framework for creating such applications. Our applications were created for supporting typical collaborative tasks performed by secondary students. We present our findings on the usage of these applications by the users in the settings of a secondary school classroom.