Paul A. Cairns

A grounded investigation of game immersion

The term immersion is widely used to describe games but it is not clear what immersion is or indeed if people are using the same word consistently. This paper describes work done to define immersion based on the experiences of gamers. Grounded Theory is used to construct a robust division of immersion into the three levels: engagement, engrossment and total immersion. This division alone suggests new lines for investigating immersion and transferring it into software domains other than games.

Research Methods for Human-Computer Interaction

Human-Computer Interaction draws on the fields of computer science, psychology, cognitive science, and organisational and social sciences in order to understand how people use and experience interactive technology. Until now, researchers have been forced to return to the individual subjects to learn about research methods and how to adapt them to the particular challenges of HCI. This is the first book to provide a single resource through which a range of commonly used research methods in HCI are introduced. Chapters are authored by internationally leading HCI researchers who use examples from their own work to illustrate how the methods apply in an HCI context. Each chapter also contains key references to help researchers find out more about each method as it has been used in HCI. Topics covered include experimental design, use of eyetracking, qualitative research methods, cognitive modelling, how to develop new methodologies and writing up your research.

Reducing number entry errors: solving a widespread, serious problem

Number entry is ubiquitous: it is required in many fields including science, healthcare, education, government, mathematics and finance. People entering numbers are to be expected to make errors, but shockingly few systems make any effort to detect, block or otherwise manage errors. Worse, errors may be ignored but processed in arbitrary ways, with unintended results. A standard class of error (defined in the paper) is an ‘out by 10 error’, which is easily made by miskeying a decimal point or a zero. In safety-critical domains, such as drug delivery, out by 10 errors generally have adverse consequences. Here, we expose the extent of the problem of numeric errors in a very wide range of systems. An analysis of better error management is presented: under reasonable assumptions, we show that the probability of out by 10 errors can be halved by better user interface design. We provide a demonstration user interface to show that the approach is practical. To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact.(Charles Darwin 1879 [2008], p. 229)

Not doing but thinking: the role of challenge in the gaming experience

Previous research into the experience of videogames has shown the importance of the role of challenge in producing a good experience. However, defining exactly which challenges are important and which aspects of gaming experience are affected is largely under-explored. In this paper, we investigate if altering the level of challenge in a videogame influences peoples experience of immersion. Our first study demonstrates that simply increasing the physical demands of the game by requiring gamers to interact more with the game does not result in increased immersion. In a further two studies, we use time pressure to make games more physically and cognitively challenging. We find that the addition of time pressure increases immersion as predicted. We argue that the level of challenge experienced is an interaction between the level of expertise of the gamer and the cognitive challenge encompassed within the game.

The effect of interruptions on postcompletion and other procedural errors: an account based on the activation-based goal memory model.

A postcompletion error (PCE) is a specific kind of cognitive slip that involves omitting a final task step after the main goal of the task is accomplished. It is notoriously difficult to provoke (and hence study) slips under experimental conditions. In this paper, the authors present an experimental task paradigm that has been shown to be effective for studying PCEs in routine procedural tasks. Two studies were carried out to examine the effect of interruption position and task structure on the prevalence of PCEs. It was found that significantly more PCEs were obtained when an interruption occurred just before the PC step than when an interruption occurred at any other position in the task. The authors account for this effect in terms of Altmann and Traftons activation-based goal memory model. The same interruption effect was obtained for some, but not all, other procedural errors; the authors discuss the nature of these errors and likely explanations for the differences.

A systematic literature review for agile development processes and user centred design integration

Agile development processes and User Centred Design (UCD) integration have been gaining increased interest, in part due to the complementarity of the techniques, the benefits each can apply to the other, and the challenges associated with their combination. This paper describes a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) that was conducted on Agile and UCD integration. The aim of this SLR was to identify various challenging factors that restrict Agile and User Centred Design Integration (AUCDI) and explore the proposed practices to deal with them. The study included a total of 71 papers and excluded 80 papers published from the year 2000 till 2012. AUCDI challenges and their respective proposed practices and success factors were synthesized. A description and taxonomy of AUCDI challenges and its respective success factors and practices were reported. Practitioners can utilise the results in identifying potential AUCDI challenges and practices or success factors to deal with them.

Behaviour, realism and immersion in games

Immersion is recognised as an important element of good games. However, it is not always clear what is meant by immersion. Earlier work has identified possible barriers to immersion including a lack of coherence between different aspects of the game. Building on this work, we designed an experiment to examine peoples expectations of how a game should behave and what would happen if that behaviour was deliberately made to be incoherent. The idea then is to understand immersion through seeing how immersion can be broken. The main manipulation was to alter the behaviour and realism of the graphics in the course of a simple game situation. Surprisingly, results indicated that participants could be so immersed within a simple environment such that even significant changes in behaviour had little effect on the level of immersion. In some cases, the attempted disruptions went completely unnoticed. These results suggest that immersion within an application can overcome effects which are completely against user expectations.

A Framework for Modelling Trojans and Computer Virus Infection

It is not possible to view a computer operating in the real world, including the possibility of Trojan horse programs and computer viruses, as simply a finite realisation of a Turing machine. We consider the actions of Trojan horses and viruses in real computer systems and suggest a minimal framework for an adequate formal understanding of the phenomena. Some conventional approaches, including biological metaphors, are shown to be inadequate; some suggestions are made towards constructing virally-resistant systems.

Engagement with an interactive museum exhibit

Learning and engagement have been recognised as very important in defining the effectiveness of interactive museum exhibits. However the relationship between these two notions is not fully understood. In particular, little is known about engagement with interactive exhibits and how it relates to learning. This paper describes a hypothesis seeking approach to find out how children engage with an interactive exhibit at the Science Museum. Engagement is found to be described in terms of the three categories: participation, narration and co-presence of others. These aspects of engagement can be seen to arise from specific aspects of the interaction design of the exhibit. Moreover, they also overlap with features required for a positive learning experience. These findings suggest many fruitful directions for future research in this area.

Tlk or txt? Using voice input for SMS composition

This paper reports a series of investigations, which aim to test the appropriateness of voice recognition as an interaction method for mobile phone use. First, a KLM model was used in order to compare the speed of using voice recognition against using multi-tap and predictive text (the two most common methods of text entry) to interact with the phone menus and compose a text message. The results showed that speech is faster than the other two methods and that a combination of input methods provides the quickest task completion times. The first experiment used a controlled message creation task to validate the KLM predictions. This experiment also confirmed that the result was not due to a speed/accuracy trade off and that participants preferred to use the combination of input methods rather than a single method for menu interaction and text composition. The second experiment investigated the effect of limited visual feedback (when walking down the road or driving a car for example) on interaction, providing further evidence in support of speech as a useful input method. These experiments not only indicate the usefulness of voice in SMS input but also that users could also be satisfied with voice input in hands-busy, eyes-busy situations.