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Calibration Games: Making Calibration Tasks Enjoyable by Adding Motivating Game Elements
Abstract and Figures
Interactive systems often require calibration to ensure that input and output are optimally configured. Without calibration, user performance can degrade (e.g., if an input device is not adjusted for the user's abilities), errors can increase (e.g., if color spaces are not matched), and some interactions may not be possible (e.g., use of an eye tracker). The value of calibration is often lost, however, because many calibration processes are tedious and unenjoyable, and many users avoid them altogether. To address this problem, we propose calibration games that gather calibration data in an engaging and entertaining manner. To facilitate the creation of calibration games, we present design guidelines that map common types of calibration to core tasks, and then to well-known game mechanics. To evaluate the approach, we developed three calibration games and compared them to standard procedures. Users found the game versions significantly more enjoyable than regular calibration procedures, without compromising the quality of the data. Calibration games are a novel way to motivate users to carry out calibrations, thereby improving the performance and accuracy of many human-computer systems.
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... La gamificación, como "el uso de elementos de juegos y técnicas de diseño de juegos en contextos que no son de juegos" (Werbach & Hunter, 2014, p. 28), es un término acuñado recientemente, y que originalmente estuvo aplicado al mundo empresarial. Su objetivo principal era aumentar la participación y la satisfacción de los usuarios mediante el uso de algunas características de los juegos, como la puntuación, la obtención de recompensas, una retroalimentación inmediata y personalizada, etc. (Flatla et al., 2011;Sánchez Rivas & Pareja Prieto, 2015). ...
This study is framed in the V and VI calls for teaching innovation projects of the Universidad de Cantabria (Spain). After incorporating gamification methods and short videos in teaching Geo-technologies, our results demonstrate the high degree of satisfaction of participating students in the innovation project, reaching an average of 4.45 over 5.0 and the competences and teaching goals of the subject were satisfactorily achieved. The experience is exportable to other teaching contexts without specific funding needs.
... La gamificación, como "el uso de elementos de juegos y técnicas de diseño de juegos en contextos que no son de juegos" (Werbach & Hunter, 2014, p. 28), es un término acuñado recientemente, y que originalmente estuvo aplicado al mundo empresarial. Su objetivo principal era aumentar la participación y la satisfacción de los usuarios mediante el uso de algunas características de los juegos, como la puntuación, la obtención de recompensas, una retroalimentación inmediata y personalizada, etc. (Flatla et al., 2011;Sánchez Rivas & Pareja Prieto, 2015). ...
This study is framed in the V and VI calls for teaching innovation projects of the Universidad de Cantabria (Spain). After incorporating gamification methods and short videos in teaching Geo-technologies, our results demonstrate the high degree of satisfaction of participating students in the innovation project, reaching an average of 4.45 over 5.0 and the competences and teaching goals of the subject were satisfactorily achieved. The experience is exportable to other teaching contexts without specific funding needs.
... In the field of HCI, Gamification typically involves the application of game elements, such as rewards, challenges, themes, progress, social interactions, assistance, narratives, or timers to the task or feedback [9,18,13]. For healthy users, gamified BCI interactions are generally more enjoyable than non-gamified versions, for example, due to enhanced feedback and intuitive brain signal mapping [3,4,18,13]. ...
... It is more likely that game designers try from the beginning to pack a non-game target by using game design strategies for the insipid and unattractive content or context concerned by the audience. The concept is based on that the game elements in entertaining video games should be able to make other, non-game applications more enjoyable and engaging as well (Flatla, Gutwin, Nacke, Bateman, & Mandryk, 2011). However, the definition of game elements and how to use it for gamification brings up debates among researchers and will be discussed in the later literature review section. ...
Gamification is the use of game design elements and game mechanisms in non-game context to increase audience’s motivation and engagement. Not only being applied on the commercial market to attract consumers, gamification is also used in educational context by teachers to help keeping students engaged and motivated in the physical classrooms. This paper furthermore upraises the discussion of how the gamification strategies can be implemented online for a website with academic purposes to retain its members, and what of which are the members’ most concerns a designer should adapt to if time and resource are limited. Examples are given and an online survey of 73 subjects with empirical experience was conduct to reveal that among those game mechanisms proposed, the graphical feedbacks are the subjects’ most concerns, followed by the gamified theme activity and discussion board. For websites which are not gameplay purposed this paper could provide useful suggestions for the designers who try to use gamification for enhancing the audience’s participation and enthusiasm, even for educational purposes.
Gamification, when properly implemented in education and training, can increase the engagement and motivation of learners and inspire them to change aspects of their behaviour to support learning. Although the use of gamification in the learning process might have a positive impact, its potential to strengthen education and training has not yet been confirmed. The descriptive literature review presented in this article synthesises studies and findings on the use of gamification in the education and training context. The authors used the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) model to select and analyse 46 publications from six bibliographic databases. They investigated the gamification theories, frameworks, models, elements and mechanics that can support learning. In addition, research was conducted to identify constraints, challenges and organisational impediments that may arise in gamified education and training programmes, to answer the question of how gamification can be implemented to achieve better learning outcomes. Findings show that further studies need to be conducted into this evolving learning approach. Overall, gamification is most likely to be effective when instructional design principles are used to ensure training content meets learners’ needs and expectations.
Gamification and video games share more than just a name; they both rely on psychological foundations to create engaging challenges that interest and motivate their users. Consequently, there are still numerous opportunities for cross‐pollination in design, management, treatment of users and so forth. Video games that achieve long‐term success rely on game structures that support community building, but within gamification, this aspect has been less emphasized. This paper draws on a case study of the company CCP Games and the community surrounding their game, EVE Online . By utilizing grounded theory, we examined the evolution of gamers' contributions and motivations. This analysis led to a conceptual model that reveals the stages of a player's development within both the game and its community. Unique insights into the community were gathered from semistructured interviews with lead users, supported by secondary data. This paper contributes to community innovation, gaming and gamification literatures by highlighting how approaches to motivation within innovative gaming communities can be beneficial for gamification. It also has practical implications, as a better understanding of community members and their needs can lead to improved innovation and co‐creation processes in gaming and non‐gaming contexts.
In this paper, we present a novel, unobtrusive calibration method that leverages the association between eye-movement and text to calibrate eye-tracking devices during natural reading. The calibration process involves an iterative sequence of 3 steps: (1) matching the points of eye-tracking data with the text grids and boundary grids, (2) computing the weight for each point pair, and (3) optimizing the calibration parameters that best align point pairs through gradient descent. During this process, we assume that, from a holistic perspective, the gaze will cover the text area, effectively filling it after sufficient reading. Meanwhile, on a granular level, the gaze duration is influenced by the semantic and positional features of the text. Therefore, factors such as the presence of empty space, the positional features of tokens, and the depth of constituency parsing play important roles in calibration. Our method achieves accuracy error comparable to traditional 7-point mehtod after naturally reading 3 texts, which takes about 51.75 seconds. Moreover, we analyse the impact of different holistic and granular features on the calibration results.
Objective: The current study aims to understand how Apple Watch helped users maintain wellness routines during the COVID-19 lockdown period, where access to public gyms and spaces was curtailed. We explore the effectiveness of biofeedback engagement aspects of Apple Watch: goals, alerts and notifications, and sociability aspects of the device or social interaction with other users. Methods: We report the results of a 2-week digital diary study based in the United States with 10 adults with 6 months or longer exposure to Apple Watch, followed by online survey responses gathered from 330 additional users. Results: The study findings show how Apple Watch transforms notifications from distractions into positive wellness tools. Data suggests that personal context (custom goals and supported intent) combined with motivational nudges from alerts and notifications as well as contextually triggered nudges contribute to Apple Watch user adoption and satisfaction. Conclusion: This study highlights how Apple Watch transforms notifications from distractions into positive wellness tools; emphasizing the importance of balancing nudging with customization with user control. Sociability and privacy remain crucial, especially with biofeedback-enabled fitness trackers. We conclude that Apple Watch enhances user engagement by triggering context-relevant interactions, nudging users to achieve their goals through small, motivated behaviors.
In this paper we present the MDA framework (standing for Mechanics, Dynamics, and Aesthetics), developed and taught as part of the Game Design and Tuning Workshop at the Game Developers Conference, San Jose 2001-2004. MDA is a formal approach to understanding games – one which attempts to bridge the gap between game design and development, game criticism, and technical game research. We believe this methodology will clarify and strengthen the iterative processes of developers, scholars and researchers alike, making it easier for all parties to decompose, study and design a broad class of game designs and game artifacts.
Wall-sized interactive displays gain more and more atten-tion as a valuable tool for multiuser applications, but typi-cally require the adoption of projectors tiles. Projectors tend to display deformed images, due to lens distortion and/or imperfection, and because they are almost never perfectly aligned to the projection surface. Multi-projector video-walls are typically bounded to the video architecture and to the specific application to be displayed. This makes it hard-er to develop interactive applications, in which a fine grained control of the coordinate transformations (to and from user space and model space) is required. This paper presents a solution to such issues: implementing the blend-ing functionalities at an application level allows seamless development of multi-display interactive applications with multi-touch capabilities. The description of the multi-touch interaction, guaranteed by an array of cameras on the base-line of the wall, is beyond the scope of this work which fo-cuses on calibration.
"Gamification" is an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non-gaming systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement. The recent introduction of 'gamified' applications to large audiences promises new additions to the existing rich and diverse research on the heuristics, design patterns and dynamics of games and the positive UX they provide. However, what is lacking for a next step forward is the integration of this precise diversity of research endeavors. Therefore, this workshop brings together practitioners and researchers to develop a shared understanding of existing approaches and findings around the gamification of information systems, and identify key synergies, opportunities, and questions for future research.
Bringing joysticks and scoreboards into our daily routine may be the key to making us better people
3D first-person shooter games provide highly polished, compelling and entertaining environments that far out-strip the refinement of most research systems. Many also provide extensive support for tailoring the environment, allowing researchers to adapt them to specific research agendas. This paper examines using 3D first-person shooter game environments for motivating participants in Fitts' Law studies. In particular, we examine whether the first-person metaphor for target acquisition, which involves rotating the world to pan the target to the screen-centre, is accurately modelled by Fitts' Law, and whether the resultant Fitts' metrics are representative of traditional cursor-based acquisition. Results show excellent Fitts' modelling, with metrics that are similar to traditional pointing.
The development and clinical evaluation of a computer game-based EMG biofeedback system is described, whose purpose is to enable or disable the playing of a computer game by a user, based on the intensity of muscle activity recorded from the muscle of interest. The game can be used in the development of increased muscle function or in the suppression of muscle spasticity. Biofeedback is provided as the system allows the subject to control game play using muscle contraction/relaxation. A built-in calibration mechanism caters for varying muscle sizes and strengths. Clinical evaluation of the biofeedback system, for muscular rehabilitation, has been carried out on 8 adult subjects with cerebral palsy over a four-week period.
First, a number of previous theories of intrinsic motivation are reviewed. Then, several studies of highly motivating computer games are described. These studies focus on what makes the games fun, not on what makes them educational. Finally, with this background, a rudimentary theory of intrinsically motivating instruction is developed, based on three categories: challenge, fantasy, and curiosity.
Challenge is hypothesized to depend on goals with uncertain outcomes. Several ways of making outcomes uncertain are discussed, including variable difficulty level, multiple level goals, hidden information, and randomness. Fantasy is claimed to have both cognitive and emotional advantages in designing instructional environments. A distinction is made between extrinsic fantasies that depend only weakly on the skill used in a game, and intrinsic fantasies that are intimately related to the use of the skill. Curiosity is separated into sensory and cognitive components, and it is suggested that cognitive curiosity can be aroused by making learners believe their knowledge structures are incomplete, inconsistent, or unparsimonious.
Motion-capture recordings of sign language are used in research on automatic recognition of sign language or generation of sign language animations, which have accessibility applications for deaf users with low levels of written-language literacy. Motion-capture gloves are used to record the wearer's handshape. Unfortunately, these gloves require a time-consuming and inexact manual calibration process each time they are worn. This paper describes the design and evaluation of a new calibration protocol for motion-capture gloves, which is designed to make the process more efficient and to be accessible for participants who are deaf and use American Sign Language (ASL). The protocol was evaluated experimentally; deaf ASL signers wore the gloves, were calibrated (using the new protocol and using a calibration routine provided by the glove manufacturer), and were asked to perform sequences of ASL handshapes. A native ASL signer rated the correctness and understandability of the collected handshape data. The new protocol received significantly higher scores than the standard calibration. The protocol has been made freely available online, and it includes directions for the researcher, images and videos of how participants move their hands during the process, and directions for participants (as ASL videos and English text).