Philipp Brauner

Increase Physical Fitness and Create Health Awareness through Exergames and Gamification - The Role of Individual Factors, Motivation and Acceptance.

Demographic change and the aging population push health and welfare system to its limits. Increased physical fitness and increased awareness for health issues will help elderly to live independently for longer and will thereby reduce the costs in the health care system. Exergames seem to be a promising solution for promoting physical fitness. Still, there is little evidence under what conditions Exergames will be accepted and used by elderly. To investigate promoting and hindering factors we conducted a user study with a prototype of an Exergame. We contrasted young vs. elderly players and investigated the role of gamer types, personality factors and technical expertise on the performance within the game and changes in the attitude towards individual health after the game. Surprisingly, performance within the game is not affected by performance motivation but by gamer type. More importantly, a universal positive effect on perceived pain is detected after the Exergame intervention.

From boring to scoring - a collaborative serious game for learning and practicing mathematical logic for computer science education

In this study, we address the problem of low retention and high dropout rates of computer science university students in early semesters of the studies. Complex and high abstract mathematical learning materials have been identified as one reason for the dropout rate. In order to support the understanding and practicing of core mathematical concepts, we developed a game-based multitouch learning environment in which the need for a suitable learning environment for mathematical logic was combined with the ability to train cooperation and collaboration in a learning scenario. As application domain, the field of mathematical logic had been chosen. The development process was accomplished along three steps: First, ethnographic interviews were run with 12 students of computer science revealing typical problems with mathematical logic. Second, a multitouch learning environment was developed. The game consists of multiple learning and playing modes in which teams of students can collaborate or compete against each other. Finally, a twofold evaluation of the environment was carried out (user study and cognitive walk-through). Overall, the evaluation showed that the game environment was easy to use and rated as helpful: The chosen approach of a multiplayer game supporting competition, collaboration, and cooperation is perceived as motivating and “fun.”

Reducing Complexity with Simplicity - Usability Methods for Industry 4.0

At RWTH Aachen University the research cluster “Production Technology for High-Wage Countries” engages in advancing the polylemma of production. In many cases engineers and physicists develop simulation tools, machine interfaces, and data exploration tools but lack essential training in HumanComputer Interaction. Without proper training the interaction of visual, cognitive and task complexity can lead to solutions that are valuable only to the developers themselves, but are not usable without extensive training. We show the most critical ergonomic factors for developing software in a scientific engineering setting that focuses on complex problems. We present an overview of usability methods as well as complexity reduction methods and their applicability in engineering software design. We present an exemplary study for the case of supply chain management, where the approaches were successfully integrated into a serious game not only serving as an investigatory tool but also as a training utility for supply chain managers.

Human factors in supply chain management

Human behavior in supply chains is insufficiently explored. Wrong decisions by decision makers leads to insufficient behavior and lower performance not only for the decision maker, but also for other stakeholders along the supply chain. In order to study the complex decision situation, we developed a supply chain game in which we studied experimentally the decisions of different stakeholder within the chain. 121 participants took part in a web-based supply chain game. We investigated the effects of gender, personality and technical competency on the performance within the supply chain. Also, learnability and the effect of presence of point-of-sale data are investigated. Performance depended on the position within the chain and fluctuating stock levels were observed in form of the bullwhip effect. Furthermore, we found that risk taking had an impact on the performance and that the performance improved after the first round of the game.

Serious Games for Cognitive Training in Ambient Assisted Living Environments – A Technology Acceptance Perspective

Two technology trends address the rising costs of healthcare systems in aging societies: Serious Games for Healthcare and Ambient Assisted Living Environments. Surprisingly, these concepts are rarely combined and the users’ perception and use of Serious Games in Ambient Assisted Living environments is insufficiently understood. We present the evaluation of a serious game for stimulating cognitive abilities for elderly with regard to technology acceptance (based on the UTAUT2 model), performance and preference for an interaction device (tablet, table, wall). The results suggest that acceptance of serious games is independent of gender, technical expertise, gaming habits, and only weakly influenced by age. Determinants for acceptance are perceived fun and the feeling that the users can make playing the game a habit. Performance within the game is explained by age and previous gaming experience. All investigated interaction devices were rated as useful and easy to learn, although the wall-sized display had lower approval levels. The article concludes with guidelines for successfully introducing serious games for healthcare to residents in ambient assisted living environments.

Smart Textiles as Intuitive and Ubiquitous User Interfaces for Smart Homes

Textile user interfaces for smart homes offer novel intuitive input gestures and may lower acceptance barrier for technophobic or elderly people. To understand the users’ requirements of smart textile input devices, an Adaptive Conjoint Analysis with the attributes wearability, functionality, haptic, location, and components was carried out with 100 participants. The attributes were rated with different importances. Users request non-wearable textile input devices with no noticeable electronics for the living room. Gender, but no age effects were identified, as women prefer health applications, whereas men prefer media control. In summary, the device needs to be individually tailored to the user’s requirements to achieve high acceptance.

Human Factors in Production Systems

Information and communication technology (ICT) is getting smaller and faster at a dashing pace and is increasingly pervading production technology. This penetration of ICT within and across production technology enables companies to aggregate and utilize massive amounts of data of production processes, both horizontally (across different products) and vertically (from machine level, over the shop floor, to the supply chain level). Presumably, this yields in Smart Factories with adaptable manufacturing processes that adjust to different goals, such as performance, product quality, or resource efficiency. But the increasing amount of available data also raises considerable challenges: Strategic decisions still depend on humans in the loop who have to perceive and process increasingly complex multi dimensional data sets and to make decisions whose effects are increasingly difficult to forecast. This paper is concerned with the potential of the human factor. Along with three case studies, we demonstrate the potential of human factors in the development of applications for Smart Factories and enterprises in the era of Industry 4.0. The paper concludes with a set of guidelines and methods for the user-centred development of applications for Industry 4.0.

Ubiquitous Computing at its best: Serious exercise games for older adults in ambient assisted living environments – a technology acceptance perspective

Received on 05 November 2014; accepted on 01 December 2014; published on 03 July 2015

Understanding Requirements for Textile Input Devices Individually Tailored Interfaces within Home Environments

In the last few years, many countries showed an increased public awareness regarding the consequences of the demographic change, which presents considerable challenges on future health care systems in the next decades. As a framework of the research presented here, we introduce a currently running interdisciplinary research project in which novel textile input devices are to be developed, iteratively designed, and evaluated. In order to learn about the individual requirements for using smart textiles in a home context, we carried out a exploratory questionnaire study in which 72 participants aged 20-76 evaluated perceived benefits and barriers of smart textiles in the home context. Results show a first insight into user experience and the general willingness to adopt smart textile input devices. Also, the perceived suitability of functions to be controlled by those novel input devices as well as the reported appropriateness of different rooms and general device styles into which smart input devices could be integrated were collected. Results show, overall, a high willingness of participants to use smart textiles as input devices.

A Step in the Right Direction – Understanding Privacy Concerns and Perceived Sensitivity of Fitness Trackers

Keeping an active lifestyle has been important and recommended for decades. The arrival of the Internet of Things (IoT) offers opportunities to simplify the tracking and logging of data supporting that lifestyle. So-called activity or fitness trackers have become smaller and more affordable over the past few years. However, their use is not as widespread as could be. This explorative study with n = 82 participants investigates privacy concerns and sensitivity regarding data gathered with wearables. It was found that long-term storage location and possible recipients of the collected data do play important roles. However, the consensus was that the participants would prefer to keep said data to themselves. Furthermore, user factors such as age, gender, and privacy behavior could not be identified as having an effect on sharing said data.