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A Gamified and Adaptive Learning System for Neurodivergent Workers in Electronic Assembling Tasks
(2020)
Learning and work-oriented assistive systems are often designed to fit the workflow of neurotypical workers. Neurodivergent workers and individuals with learning disabilities often present cognitive and sensorimotor characteristics that are better accommodated with personalized learning and working processes. Therefore, we designed an adaptive learning system that combines an augmented interaction space with user-sensitive virtual assistance to support step-by-step guidance for neurodivergent workers in electronic assembling tasks. Gamified learning elements were also included in the interface to provide self-motivation and praise whenever users progress in their learning and work achievements.
The transition from college to university can have a variety of psychological effects on students who need to cope with daily obligations by themselves in a new setting, which can result in loneliness and social isolation. Mobile technology, specifically mental health apps (MHapps), have been seen as promising solutions to assist university students who are facing these problems, however, there is little evidence around this topic. My research investigates how a mobile app can be designed to reduce social isolation and loneliness among university students. The Noneliness app is being developed to this end; it aims to create social opportunities through a quest-based gamified system in a secure and collaborative network of local users. Initial evaluations with the target audience provided evidence on how an app should be designed for this purpose. These results are presented and how they helped me to plan the further steps to reach my research goals. The paper is presented at MobileHCI 2020 Doctoral Consortium.
What emotional effects does gamification have on users who work or learn with repetitive tasks? In this work, we use biosignals to analyze these affective effects of gamification. After a brief discussion of related work, we describe the implementation of an assistive system augmenting work by projecting elements for guidance and gamification. We also show how this system can be extended to analyse users' emotions. In a user study, we analyse both biosignals (facial expressions and electrodermal activity), and regular performance measures (error rate and task completion time).
For the performance measures, the results confirm known effects like increased speed and slightly increased error rate. In addition, the analysis of the biosignals provides strong evidence for two major affective effects: the gamification of work and learning tasks incites highly significantly more positive emotions and increases emotionality altogether. The results add to the design of assistive systems, which are aware of the physical as well as the affective context.
Brand identification has the potential of shaping individuals' attitudes, performance and commitment within learning and work contexts. We explore these effects, by incorporating elements of branded identification within gamified environments. We report a study with 44 employees, in which task performance and emotional outcomes are assessed in a real-world assembly scenario - namely, while performing a soldering task. Our results indicate that brand identification has a direct impact on individuals' attitude towards the task at hand: while instigating positive emotions, aversion and reactance also arise.
Well-designed and informative product presentations can support consumers in making purchase decisions. There are plenty of facts and details about a product of interest. However, also emotions are an important aspect for the purchase decision. The unique visualization opportunities of virtual reality (VR) can give users of VR applications the feeling of being there (telepresence). The applications can intensely engage them in a flow experience, comprising the four dimensions of enjoyment, curiosity, focused attention and control. In this work, we claim that VR product presentations can create subjective product experiences for consumers and motivate them to reuse this innovative type of product presentation in the future, by immersing them in a virtual world and causing them to interact with it. To verify the conceptual model a study was conducted with 551 participants who explored a VR hotel application. The results indicate that VR product presentations evoke positive emotions among consumers. The virtual experience made potential customers focus their attention on the virtual world and aroused their curiosity about getting more information about the product in an enjoyable way. In contrast to the theoretical assumption, control did not influence the users’ behavioral intentions to reuse VR product presentation. We conclude that VR product presentations create a feeling of telepresence, which leads to a flow experience that contributes to the behavioral intention of users to reuse VR product presentations in the future.
Co-Designing Assistive Tools to Support Social Interactions by Individuals Living with Deafblindness
(2020)
Deafblindness is a dual sensory impairment that affects many aspects of life, including mobility, access to information, communication, and social interactions. Furthermore, individuals living with deafblindness are under a high risk of social isolation. Therefore, we identified opportunities for applying assistive tools to support social interactions through co-ideation activities with members of the deafblind community. This work presents our co-design approach, lessons learned and directions for designing meaningful assistive tools for dual sensory loss.
With projectors and depth cameras getting cheaper, assistive systems in industrial manufacturing are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. As these systems are able to continuously provide feedback using in-situ projection, they are perfectly suited for supporting impaired workers in assembling products. However, so far little research has been conducted to understand the effects of projected instructions on impaired workers. In this paper, we identify common visualizations used by assistive systems for impaired workers and introduce a simple contour visualization. Through a user study with 64 impaired participants we compare the different visualizations to a control group using no visual feedback in a real world assembly scenario, i.e. assembling a clamp. Furthermore, we introduce a simplified version of the NASA-TLX questionnaire designed for impaired participants. The results reveal that the contour visualization is significantly better in perceived mental load and perceived performance of the participants. Further, participants made fewer errors and were able to assemble the clamp faster using the contour visualization compared to a video visualization, a pictorial visualization and a control group using no visual feedback.
The number of impaired persons rises -- as a result of both regular degradation with age and psychological problems like burnout. Sheltered work organizations aim to reintegrate impaired persons into work environments and prepare them for the re-entry in the regular job market.
Both for elderly and for impaired persons it is crucial to quickly assess the abilities, to identify limits and potentials and thus find work processes suitable for their skill profile.
This work focuses on the analysis and comparison of software-tools that assess the abilities of persons with impairments. We describe two established generic tools (CANTAB, Cogstate), analyze a yet unknown specialized tool (Hamet) and present a new gamified tool (GATRAS).
Finally, we present a study with 20 participants with impairments, comparing the tools against a ground truth baseline generated by a real-world assembly task.
Design approaches for the gamification of production environments: a study focusing on acceptance
(2015)
Gamification is an ever more popular method to increase motivation and user experience in real-world settings. It is widely used in the areas of marketing, health and education. However, in production environments, it is a new concept. To be accepted in the industrial domain, it has to be seamlessly integrated in the regular work processes.
In this work we make the following contributions to the field of gamification in production: (1) we analyze the state of the art and introduce domain-specific requirements; (2) we present two implementations gamifying production based on alternative design approaches; (3) these are evaluated in a sheltered work organization. The comparative study focuses acceptance, motivation and perceived happiness.
The results reveal that a pyramid design showing each work process as a step on the way towards a cup at the top is strongly preferred to a more abstract approach where the processes are represented by a single circle and two bars.
We present the design outline of a context-aware interactive system for smart learning in the STEM curriculum (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). It is based on a gameful design approach and enables "playful coached learning" (PCL): a learning process enriched by gamification but also close to the learner's activities and emotional setting. After a brief introduction on related work, we describe the technological setup, the integration of projected visual feedback and the use of object and motion recognition to interpret the learner's actions. We explain how this combination enables rapid feedback and why this is particularly important for correct habit formation in practical skills training. In a second step, we discuss gamification methods and analyze which are best suited for the PCL system. Finally, emotion recognition, a major element of the final PCL design not yet implemented, is briefly outlined.
Designing Authentic Emotions for Non-Human Characters. A Study Evaluating Virtual Affective Behavior
(2017)
While human emotions have been researched for decades, designing authentic emotional behavior for non-human characters has received less attention. However, virtual behavior not only affects game design, but also allows creating authentic avatars or robotic companions. After a discussion of methods to model and recognize emotions, we present three characters with a decreasing level of human features and describe how established design techniques can be adapted for such characters. In a study, 220 participants assess these characters' emotional behavior, focusing on the emotion "anger". We want to determine how reliable users can recognize emotional behavior, if characters increasingly do not look and behave like humans. A secondary aim is determining if gender has an impact on the competence in emotion recognition. The findings indicate that there is an area of insecure attribution of virtual affective behavior not distant but close to human behavior. We also found that at least for anger, men and women assess emotional behavior equally well.
Video game developers continuously increase the degree of details and realism in games to create more human-like characters. But increasing the human-likeness becomes a problem in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon that predicts negative feelings of people towards artificial entities. We developed an avatar creation system to examine preferences towards parametrized faces and explore in regard to the Uncanny Valley phenomenon how people design faces that they like or reject. Based on the 3D model of the Caucasian average face, 420 participants generate 1341 faces of positively and negatively associated concepts of both gender. The results show that some characteristics associated with the Uncanny Valley are used to create villains or repulsive faces. Heroic faces get attractive features but are rarely and little stylized. A voluntarily designed face is very similar to the heroine. This indicates that there is a tendency of users to design feminine and attractive but still credible faces.
Applications helping us to maintain the focus on work are called “Zenware” (from concentration and Zen). While form factors, use cases and functionality vary, all these applications have a common goal: creating uninterrupted, focused attention on the task at hand. The rise of such tools exemplifies the users’ desire to control their attention within the context of omnipresent distraction. In expert interviews we investigate approaches in the context of attention-management at the workplace of knowledge workers. To gain a broad understanding, we use judgement sampling in interviews with experts from several disciplines. We especially explore how focus and flow can be stimulated. Our contribution has four components: a brief overview on the state of the art (1), a presentation of the results (2), strategies for coping with digital distractions and design guidelines for future Zenware (3) and an outlook on the overall potential in digital work environments (4).
Deafblindness is a condition that limits communication capabilities primarily to the haptic channel. In the EU-funded project SUITCEYES we design a system which allows haptic and thermal communication via soft interfaces and textiles. Based on user needs and informed by disability studies, we combine elements from smart textiles, sensors, semantic technologies, image processing, face and object recognition, machine learning, affective computing, and gamification. In this work, we present the underlying concepts and the overall design vision of the resulting assistive smart wearable.
Nowadays, the wide majority of Europeans uses smartphones. However, touch displays are still not accessible by everyone. Individuals with deafblindness, for example, often face difculties in accessing vision-based touchscreens. Moreover, they typically have few fnancial resources which increases the need for customizable, low-cost assistive devices. In this work-in-progress, we present four prototypes made from low-cost, every-day materials, that make modern pattern lock mechanisms more accessible to individuals with vision impairments or even with deafblindness. Two out of four prototypes turned out to be functional tactile overlays for accessing digital 4-by-4 grids that are regularly used to encode dynamic dot patterns. In future work, we will conduct a user study investigating whether these two prototypes can make dot-based pattern lock mechanisms more accessible for individuals with visual impairments or deafblindness.
The isolation measures adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic brought light to discussions related to the importance of meaningful social relationships as a basic need to human well-being. But even before the pandemic outbreak in the years 2020 and 2021, organizations and scholars were already drawing attention to the growing numbers related to lonely people in the world (World Economic Forum, 2019). Loneliness is an emotional distress caused by the lack of meaningful social connections, which affects people worldwide across all age groups, mainly young adults (Rook, 1984). The use of digital technologies has gained prominence as a means of alleviating the distress. As an example, studies have shown the benefits of using digital games both to stimulate social interactions (Steinfield, Ellison & Lampe, 2008) and to enhance the effects of digital interventions for mental health treatments, through gamification (Fleming et al., 2017). It is with these aspects in mind that the gamified app Noneliness was designed with the intention of reducing loneliness rates among young students at a German university. In addition to sharing the related works that supported the application development, this chapter also presents the aspects considered for the resource's design, its main functionalities, and the preliminary results related to the reduction of loneliness in the target audience.
Gamification implies the application of methods and design patterns from gaming to non-gaming areas like learning or working. We applied an existing gamification design to production processes in an organization which provides sheltered employment for impaired persons. In contrast to existing work, we investigated not only a short period but a complete workday to measure the effects on the work performance. The study indicates that gamification has (1) a negative effect on workers with considerable cognitive impairments, (2) no significant effect on workers with medium cognitive impairments and (3) a positive effect on workers with mild cognitive impairments.
In this work we provide an overview of gamification, i.e. the application of methods from game design to enrich non-gaming processes. The contribution is divided into five subsections: an introduction focusing on the progression of gamification through the hype cycle in the recent years (1), a brief introduction to gamification mechanics (1) and an overview of the state of the art in established areas (3). The focus is a discussion of more recent attempts of gamification in service and production (4). We also discuss the ethical implications (5) and the future perspectives (6) of gamified business processes. Gamification has been successfully applied in the domains education (serious games) and health (exergames) and is spreading to other areas. In recent years there have been various attempts to “gamify” business processes. While the first efforts date back as far as the collection of miles in frequent flyer programs, we will portray some of the more recent and comprehensive software-based approaches in the service industry, e.g. the gamification of processes in sales and marketing. We discuss their accomplishments as well as their social and ethical implicatio. Finally a very recent approach is presented: the application of gamification in the domain of industrial production. We discuss the special requirements in this domain and the effects on the business level and on the users. We conclude with a prognosis on the future development of gamification.
Activities for rehabilitation and prevention are often lengthy and associated with pain and frustration. Their playful enrichment (hereafter: gamification) can counteract this, resulting in so-called “exergames”. However, in contrast to games designed solely for entertainment, the increased motivation and immersion in gamified training can lead to a reduced perception of pain and thus to health deterioration. Therefore, it is necessary to monitor activities continuously. However, only an AI-based system able to generate autonomous interventions could vacate the therapists’ costly time and allow better training at home. An automated adjustment of the movement training’s difficulty as well as individualized goal setting and control are essential to achieve such autonomy. This article’s contribution is two-fold: (1) We portray the potentials of gamification in the health area. (2) We present a framework for smart rehabilitation and prevention training allowing autonomous, dynamic, and gamified interactions.
In this work, we investigate how gamification can be integrated into work processes in the automotive industry. The contribution contains five parts: (1) An introduction showing how gamification has become increasingly common, especially in education, health and the service industry. (2) An analysis on the state of the art of gamified applications, discussing several best practices. (3) An analysis of the special requirements for gamification in production, regarding both external norms and the mindset of workers in this domain. (4) An overview of first approaches towards a gamification of production, focusing on solutions for impaired workers in sheltered work organizations. (5) A study with a focus group of instructors at two large car manufacturers. Based on the presentation of three potential designs for the gamification of production, the study investigates the general acceptance of gamification in modern production and determines which design is best suited for future implementations.