Search

Independent mobility is crucial for maintaining the quality of life of older adults. However, independent navigation outdoors can become a challenge due to various physical changes and impairments in old age. In earlier work we have developed an acoustic augmented reality guidance system to guide blind and visually impaired people intuitively using virtual 3D audio sounds as way-points. In this work we investigate if the same acoustic augmented reality guidance can be used by older adults, as there are two important challenges: a) often older adults suffers from age related hearing impairments which might affect the ability of localizing sound in 3D and b) the specifics of the life circumstances and technology usage may differ substantially from the requirements of visually impaired people. In this paper we present our first approaches to tackle these two challenges. We have assessed the ability of older adults in localizing sound in 3D space and investigated which requirements need to be considered to create a guidance system that is useful and easy to use. Our results show that despite sometimes severe and asymmetrical hearing impairments, older adults are still able to localize sounds. We also found that in order to use such a guidance system older adults also need an additional visual user interface which supports conventional methods of navigating, e.g. overview of the route.

Digital technology facilitates the lives of visually impaired people. To design accessible technology accepted by the target group, comprehensive methods of user-centred design are needed. In this paper, we present a case study with visually impaired pupils aiming for gaining bottom-up insights to support the ideation and design of a game editor to support orientation and mobility training. We involved relevant stakeholders (pupils, teachers, mobility trainers) using multiple methods, including (contextual) interview, focus group, (ideation) workshop, Gamestorming, digital survey, behavioural observation, self-experience, and early stage prototype testing. With our approach, we were able to gain a rich understanding of the needs of visually impaired pupils. The objective of this paper is to serve as reference for researchers cooperating with visually impaired pupils by providing (1) design implications for a game editor, and (2) a comprehensive reflection on approaches and issues of user-centred design methods with visually impaired pupils.

Orientation and Mobility (O&M) training is an important aspect in the education of visually impaired students. In this work we present a scavenger hunt-like location-based game to support O&M training. In two comparative studies with blind and partially sighted students and interviews with teachers we investigate if a mobile game played in the real world is a suitable approach to support O&M training and if a mobile location-based O&M training game is preferred over a game played in a virtual world. Our results show that a mobile location-based game is a fruitful approach to support O&M training for visually impaired students, and that a mobile location based game is preferred over playing in a virtual world. Based on the gathered insights we discuss implications for using mobile location-based games in O&M training.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of tailored text input methods for visually impaired and blind users that are needed on touchscreen devices to support their accessibility. Previous approaches still have issues related to the necessity of searching for characters, slow entry speeds or cumbersome handling. Design/methodology/approach – The authors developed a new Braille-based text input method named EdgeBraille, which allows entering six-point Braille characters by swiping one finger along the edges of the touchscreen in an arbitrary sequence. The approach was compared with the current standard method of a talking keyboard, first in a short-term lab study (14 participants) and then during two weeks of daily training (seven participants). Findings – Overall EdgeBraille was perceived well by the users and possesses favourable handling characteristics. In terms of user performance (words per minute and error rate) the authors found no significant differences between the two methods. However, based on the evaluation results and the feedback of the participants the authors identified possibilities for improvement in terms of a smaller EdgeBraille version allowing the entry of eight-point Braille characters, and conducted a proof-of-concept study (seven participants). Originality/value – In the paper the authors comprehensively reflect on advantages and disadvantages of Braille-based methods in general and EdgeBraille in particular. The authors argue why and how Braille-based methods should serve as complement to current text input paradigms based on talking keyboard and indicate future directions of research.

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to the UMAP 2017 Fifty Shades of Personalization - Workshop on Personalization in Serious and Persuasive Games and Gameful Interactions. Serious games (games for purposes other than entertainment) as well as persuasive games (games for promoting desirable behavior without coercion) are increasingly adopted by scholars and have also found their way into industry. Elements of games are also increasingly used to design gameful interactions (this is also referred to as gamification). Serious and persuasive approaches focus on imparting knowledge and raising awareness about topics or issues, and also fostering attitude or behavior change in a desirable direction, for example towards a healthier lifestyle. In an era when we are used to highly individualized, personal and ubiquitous interactions and with the possibility to collect an enormous amount of information about people's behaviors, habits and attitudes, personalization has increased much in significance since it became a topic in Human-Computer Interaction. Not only do we have advanced opportunities to personalize serious and persuasive games and gameful interactions, we have also scientific evidence that this is highly useful. Studies show that these technologies are more effective in educating users about certain topics and in supporting them in behavioral and attitudinal change, as well as in raising awareness and engaging them in specific topics, when they are personalized in contrast to employing a one-size-fits-all approach. Although personalization of serious and persuasive games and gameful interactions is a vibrant and highly promising area and has become an important researched field, many aspects of it are still underexplored. Thus, there is common understanding on the importance of personalization itself, but also an ongoing debate and a growing number of research on the approaches used for personalization: Will we use subjective or objective variables for personalization? Will we use continuous (such as traits) or categorical (such as types) dimensions? Will we personalize according to specific interactions (e.g. game dynamics) or ends of the interaction (e.g. different goals)? Will we rely on an a priori personalization or will we be able to personalize in real-time? The various shades of personalization in serious games and gameful interactions will be the central aspect of the workshop and will form the basis for participants' discussions.

Pokemon Go can be considered a successful persuasive game to promote physical activity. This study provides an in-depth analysis of Pokemon Go players’ characteristics that relate to adoption and continued play of the game. Based on online studies at two different points in time (at the initial release and three months later) we analyzed differences in personality traits between players and non-players, as well as between players who continued playing the game and those who stopped playing. The results show that people who played the game score lower in “Conscientiousness” and higher in “Player Motivation” than non-players. Furthermore, people who continued playing the game three months later have a lower score in “Neuroticism” than those who stopped playing. Insights into player characteristics from our empirical analysis of Pokemon Go contribute to answering the key research question regarding to which personality characteristics the persuasive game experience should be personalized.

Player type models -- such as the BrainHex model -- are popular approaches for personalizing digital games towards individual preferences of players. Although several player type models have been developed and are currently used in game design projects, there is still a lack of data on their validity. To close this research gap we currently investigate the psychometric properties (factor structure, reliability, stability) and predictive validity (if player type scores can predict player experience) of the player type model BrainHex in an ongoing project. Results of two online studies (n1=592, n2=243) show that the psychometric properties of the BrainHex model could be improved. We suggest to improve the according questionnaire and sketch how the predictive validity could be investigated in future studies.

Few accessible methods to support brainstorming sessions for blind and visually impaired users exist. We present an approach consisting of a smartphone application and tangible near field communication (NFC) cards enhanced with an additional layer by using different tactile materials. With the smartphone application blind and visually impaired users can write information, like ideas in brainstorming sessions, on NFC cards using speech recognition or voice recording. Text stored on the cards can also be read out loud with the application by using text to speech synthesis. The approach was developed based on a user centered design process with strong participation of blind and visually impaired users. It is low cost, lightweight and easily transportable. Evaluation results show that the approach is fun, easy to use and appreciated by the users. It can be used by blind and visually impaired people for tasks which require spatial arrangement of information, thus supporting accessible brainstorming sessions.

The goal of persuasive games is to change behavior and attitudes in a desirable manner, e.g., to promote physical activity. Research has shown that personalized persuasive approaches are more successful than one-size-fits-all approaches. As a means for personalization, sex has been investigated with results showing that women are overall more persuadable than men. We argue that considering only a dichotomous sex-type categorization may not be able to fully capture the differences in the persuasiveness of persuasion strategies. To that end we apply a dimensional approach of capturing gender identity --- femininity and masculinity. We investigate the relationship between masculinity, femininity, sex and the persuasiveness of ten persuasion strategies in an online study ni?ź=i?ź592. Results show that femininity is significantly associated with seven of the ten strategies, while sex does only show differences for two strategies, suggesting gender identity could be a reliable variable for personalizing persuasive games.

Tracking blockers protect from and inform about hidden trackers and services that collect data in the background while the user is surfing the web. However, existing tracking blockers provide information and feedback visually and thus are barely accessible for visually impaired and blind users. In this paper we present insights about privacy concerns of visually impaired Internet users. Moreover we present feedback strategies and guidelines for an accessible tracking blocker developed in a user centered design process. The underlying feedback principles and guidelines can be used for the design of Privacy Enhancing Technology in other domains, and therefore serve as reference for designers and developers.

Serious and persuasive games and gamified interactions have become popular in the last years, especially in the realm of behavior change support systems. They have been used as tools to support and influence human behavior in a variety of fields, such as health, sustainability, education, and security. It has been shown that personalized serious and persuasive games and gamified interactions can increase effectivity of supporting behavior change compared to "one-size-fits all"-systems. However, how serious games and gamified interactions can be personalized, which factors can be used to personalize (e.g. personality, gender, persuadability, player types, gamification user types, states, contextual/situational variables), what effect personalization has (e.g. on player/user experience) and whether there is any return on investment is still largely unexplored. This full-day workshop aims at bringing together the academic and industrial community as well as the gaming and gamification community to jointly explore these topics and define a future roadmap.

Research findings indicate that player types may serve as a theoretical basis for the design of persuasive games. However, until now no proof of concept is available that shows the applicability of this approach for tailoring games to player characteristics. We suggest a solution by formulating design concepts and by creating game prototypes that are driven by player types. Our strategies are composed of the three characteristics: first, design choices are based on the BrainHex player type model. Secondly, the concepts consider individual player styles and mechanics tailored to the various player types. Third, these individual game elements are combined into one game world. In order to evaluate our concepts we created two mobile game prototypes that foster physical activity. These prototypes are based on the Seeker and the Mastermind player type of the BrainHex model. First findings reveal that the usage of player types appears to be effective. Our efforts should enable designers to create persuasive games that are both engaging for individual players and allow the integration of several player types.

This paper presents a novel application of participatory design fiction for sustainable domestic energy consumption. In our study we examine how social practices relate to a newly developed energy management system introduced to households. We explore how design fiction can be used to identify current design limitations and to showcase future design directions to overcome these limitations. In particular, we investigated how energy consumption feedback is leaving users in a state of "helplessness" despite raising awareness of their environmental impact. Through participatory fictional future story-writing workshops we identified five levels of empowerment that design for sustainability practitioners can engage with. Our proposal is to use those levels of empowerment to reframe sustainable design by shifting from behaviour to social practices and from awareness to empowerment.

Besides other popular strategies, such as feedback and (social) comparisons, challenges have been proposed and used to influence people’s behavior towards a targeted goal. However, only very limited data on the effectiveness of such approaches and how to best design them is available yet. In this work we report the findings of a two months field study analyzing the effectiveness and perception of challenges in the context of influencing personal mobility. Individual and collaborative approaches towards challenges were studied, and specific focus was laid on what aspect makes users willing to participate in these challenges. Our findings suggest that both individual and collaborative challenges have the potential to sustain the interest of users in using behavior change support systems, that collaborative and individual challenges seem to not attract different types of users, that individual challenges in general are preferred, and that challenges are only a useful means for a subset of users. Also, ICT-competence seems to be an important aspect of being willing to participate in electronically organized challenges.

Tailored text input methods for visually impaired and blind users are needed on touchscreen devices to support their accessibility. Therefore, we de-veloped a new Braille-based text input method named EdgeBraille, which allows entering Braille characters by swiping one finger along the edges of the touchscreen. The approach was compared with the current standard method of a talking keyboard, first in a short-term lab study (14 participants) and then during two weeks of daily training (7 participants). Overall EdgeBraille was perceived well by the users. In terms of user performance we found no significant differences between the two methods. Based on the evaluation results and the feedback of our participants, we discuss advantages and disadvantages of Braille-based methods in general and EdgeBraille in particular, as well as possibilities for improvements.

One of the trump cards of digital educational games is their enormous intrinsic motivational potential. Although learning game design is often understood on a one-fits-all level, the actual motivational strength of an educational game strongly depends on the individual learners, their very specific goals, preferences, abilities, strength and weakness, personality, and experiences with gaming. Considering motivation being a fragile and constantly changing state, it is important to continuously assess learning and gaming processes and the oscillations of motivation and immersion within a game. With this premise in mind, the authors developed a psycho-pedagogical approach to a non-invasive embedded assessment of motivational states and learning progress, feeding into a dynamic, ontology-driven learner (and gamer) model. To evaluate the approach, the demonstrator games were subject to intensive quantitative and qualitative experimental research. Results show that a meaningful personalization and an individual support are key factors of the success of learning games.

Self-service systems are very common in the public space and usability plays a crucial role for user acceptance. We describe the evaluation of a self-service ticketing machine installed in trams in the city of Graz. Two in-situ methods (behavior observation, contextual interview) and an online survey were used. We discuss advantages of the different methods experienced in the present study according to effort and output. Unsurprisingly online survey was advantageous in terms of time effort. Concerning output, behavior observation identified the most issues with specific interface objects of all methods. Furthermore we were able to identify usage information about the user group of elderlies. Online survey provided a higher number of general issues with the machine and recommendations for change than the two in-situ methods. Further results are discussed and limitations of the study are described in the paper.

In this chapter we analyze the attention of users on the move towards pervasive advertising media. We report the findings of two multi-sensor eye tracking studies designed to provide a better understanding of the actual attentional behavior of users on the move in different public environments. In the first study 106 participants were equipped with eye tracking technology and asked to use public transportation vehicles equipped with information and advertising screens. In a second study 16 participants were asked to stroll through a shopping street for about 15 min, and during this time different indicators for their behavior and focus of attention (eye tracking, movement and pose tracking) were captured. Motion and pose data was correlated with eye tracking data to identify typical patterns of attention. We report the results of these studies, then discuss the implications of the main findings for pervasive advertising and finally reflect on the used research methodology.

One of the trump cards of digital educational games is their enormous intrinsic motivational potential. Although learning game design is often understood on a one-fits-all level, the actual motivational strength of an educational game strongly depends on the individual learners, their very specific goals, preferences, abilities, strength and weakness, personality, and experiences with gaming. Considering motivation being a fragile and constantly changing state, it is important to continuously assess learning and gaming processes and the oscillations of motivation and immersion within a game. With this premise in mind, the authors developed a psycho-pedagogical approach to a non-invasive embedded assessment of motivational states and learning progress, feeding into a dynamic, ontology-driven learner (and gamer) model. To evaluate the approach, the demonstrator games were subject to intensive quantitative and qualitative experimental research. Results show that a meaningful personalization and an individual support are key factors of the success of learning games.

We present a study investigating the performance in a 3D object manipulation task with a mouse and a dedicated input device (SpaceNavigator). Previous research delivered ambiguous results about the performance in different 3D tasks. Therefore we used placement (only translation) as well as docking (translation and rotation) tasks. Twelve participants experienced with 3D software took part in the study. They had to translate and rotate 30 cubes with the mouse and the SpaceNavigator (altogether 60 tasks) to place them on a chessboard in Autodesk Maya. The results show an outperformance of the mouse over the SpaceNavigator in the placement tasks but not in the docking tasks, which require a higher extent of object manipulation. Although the SpaceNavigator did not outperform the mouse, considering the number of tasks with the SpaceNavigator and further results of the study (like the learning effect and subjective feedback), the usage of a higher degree-of-freedom device for tasks with multiple simultaneous object manipulations seems reasonable.

A major advantage of educational computer games is seen in their enormous intrinsic motivational potential. However, exploiting this potential can only occur with a very strong consideration of individual states, traits, and preferences. A crucial role in this respect plays the attempt to provide individual learners/gamers with appropriate personalized interventions, either in the form personalized feedback or hinting or in the form of smooth alterations of the game (e.g., its storyline, its pace, or its difficulty). This short paper introduces the 80Days project and its ideas for gathering the necessary information from the learners in an embedded, non-invasive way. In addition, we shown our approach to adequate, highly personalized educational interventions within the virtual game worlds, making the "glissade on the learning curve" more fun and more effective.

The paper presents an empirical study with a digital educational game (DEG) called 80Days that aims at teaching geographical content. The goal of the study is twofold: (i) investigating the potential of the eye-tracking approach for evaluating DEG; (ii) studying the issue of vicarious learning in the context of DEG. Twenty-four university students were asked to view the videos of playing two micro-missions of 80Days, which varied with regard to the position of the non-player character (NPC) window (i.e. lower right vs. upper left) and the delivery of cognitive hints (i.e. with vs. without) in this text window. Eye movements of the participants were recorded with an eye-tracker. Learning effect and user experience were measured by questionnaires and interviews. Significant differences between the pre- and post-learning assessment tests suggest that observers can benefit from passive viewing of the recorded gameplay. However, the hypotheses that the game versions with cognitive hints and with the NPC window on the upper left corner can induce stronger visual attention and thus better learning effect are refuted.

Computer games are an incredibly successful technology; due to the dynamic and active nature they are perhaps even more successful and appealing than TV or movies. Facing this success and the significant amount of time young people spend on playing computer games, it is a compelling idea of educators, developers, and researchers to utilize this technology for educational purposes. In this chapter we focus on the emerging technology of digital educational games, we attempt to give a brief summary of the state-of-the-art, and we emphasize leading-edge research in this genre. Moreover, we discuss the psycho-pedagogical foundations of “good” educational computer games. Finally, we provide an outlook to the future of educational technologies.