Raffaello Brondi

Evaluating the Impact of Highly Immersive Technologies and Natural Interaction on Player Engagement and Flow Experience in Games

Social interaction in videogames has a big impact on players experience and is often used to increase enjoyment and retention. In the current study a highly immersive setup based on the Oculus Rift and depth cameras and exploiting natural user interaction is compared with a classical Keyboard & Mouse configuration in the context of a videogame experience taking place in a shared Virtual Environment. The research aims at assessing the impact of new technologies and interaction metaphors on users engagement when playing social games. Initial findings from our study suggest that while players perform better using the classic Keyboard & Mouse setup, the new technological setup and the Natural User Interface offer higher level of engagement and facilitate user flow state.

Social Networks and Web-based Serious Games as Novel Educational Tools

Abstract This paper presents the concept and the work in progress of SONNA, a research project aiming to analyze the impact of social networks, web 2.0 and interactive multimedia as tools for learning. The overall architecture, the technical details of the platform and the storyboard of two samples interactive web-based serious games are also presented, highlighting challenges and current issues.

Immersive Technologies and Natural Interaction to Improve Serious Games Engagement

Newly available technologies and natural interaction in video games are reshaping the role of immersion and interaction on game enjoyment. The current work aims at assessing a highly immersive setup exploiting natural user interaction, combining Head Mounted Display and a depth camera, with the objective of evaluating its use as a platform for Serious Games through a series of experiments whose results are presented and discussed. Initial findings suggest that the introduced technological setup offers high level of engagement and facilitate the achievement of the flow state.

An Immersive VR Experience to Learn the Craft of Printmaking

This paper presents the AMICA VR system, aiming at exploiting immersive visualization paradigms enabling visitors to be physically and emotionally involved in a virtual experience conceived for the dissemination of the activities related to craftsmanship of printmaking. The developed platform aims at spreading a better knowledge about printmaking by appropriately using Interactive Digital Storytelling and Immersive Virtual Environments, exploiting their features in terms of presence, immersion, interaction and multi-modality.

Evaluating the effects of competition vs collaboration on user engagement in an immersive game using natural interaction

Social experience can deeply impact on gaming experience and is often used to increase enjoyment and retention. In the literature two main categories of social interaction can be identified: competition and collaboration. Player engagement has been widely studied under different conditions related to the type of social interaction taking place during the game. However, rich and newly available contexts based on emerging paradigms, such as those enabled by Natural User Interfaces, have not been yet extensively addressed. In the current study the impact of collaborative and competitive goal structures on player engagement, awareness and social presence is evaluated in the context of a jigsaw puzzle game taking place in a Shared Virtual Environment using a highly immersive setup exploiting natural user interaction.

Fostering Collaboration among Restoration Professionals Using Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) has proven to provide effective tools to assist the human work in a wide range of sectors. Many examples can be found in literature of innovative AR tools used in medicine, industry and the military sector. We argue that also the activity of professional operators dealing with cultural assets, such as restorers, can benefit from the use of AR system. We have carried out a series of interviews in the field of restoration in order to identify the real needs of restorers addressable by an Augmented Reality system. We have identified two AR-based devices, exemplary of two classes of AR systems, which we believe can provide a valuable support to the restoration activities and can foster communication and collaboration among restorers. The two systems have been evaluated by the restoration professionals in the survey.

Natural User Interface to Assess Social Skills in Autistic Population

The children suffering of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) present several limitations in social communication and interactive skills. State of the art showed that Virtual Reality (VR) represents a valid alternative to learn social skills in ASD. In particular VR offers the advantage to simulate daily life interaction in a replicable and controlled environment. In this paper, we present a novel methodology to evaluate social competence in ASD based on the immersive VR system, featuring natural interaction. The VR system is based on the theoretical model which aims to evaluate the intersubjective interchange in everyday relationship between autistic population and the surrounding environment. We suggest that this technological setup can be a useful tool to increase social competence in ASD and it can become a sophisticated outcome measurement tool for studying the improvement of social competence.

ARTworks: An Augmented Reality Interface as an Aid for Restoration Professionals

Augmented Reality AR has proven to provide effective tools to assist the human work in a wide range of sectors. Many examples can be found in literature of innovative AR tools used in medicine, industry and the military fields. Recently AR has been successfully applied also to cultural heritage, mainly for communication and educational purposes. Nevertheless, we argue that also the activity of professional operators dealing with cultural heritage, such as conservators and restorers, can benefit from the use of AR-systems. The restoration process commonly builds on the analysis and study of prior interventions and, very often, on the results of pre-operative diagnoses performed on the artwork. All the information gathered during these stages is necessary during the restoration and, using AR, it can be directly overlaid on top of the artwork avoiding the necessity of a continuous visual switch between the artwork and the documentation. Moreover, through an AR-system, new digital information can be produced directly while working, fostering also new forms of documentation. We hereby present ARTworks, an AR-system intended to assist the restorer both during the operating phases, providing contextualized information, and during documentation, allowing the insertion of new registered digital information. The system, composed by a mechanical interface and an Android tablet, has been purposely designed taking into account the particular application field of restoration.

LawVille: A Collaborative Serious Game for Citizenship Education

This paper presents LawVille, a Web-Based Collaborative 3D Serious Game aimed at teaching citizenship and the Italian Constitution to secondary school students, by making them the protagonists of a fantasy story meant to solicit their direct involvement in a series of political questions.

A Multimodal Learning System for Handwriting Movements

Learning to hand-write is a complex task and is fundamental for the development of a correct language reasoning and understanding. This work presents a multimodal system that focuses on the learning of handwriting movements. The system is thought for children usage providing engaging graphics and novel feedback technologies to accelerate the learning process. The main characteristic of the system architecture is its scalability in hardware and software components so that it is possible to employ it in any domestic setup.