In Chapter 1 of Natural User Interfaces in .NET, Josh Blake asks and answers a question posed by many people who have been under the spell of keyboard input and GUI/ WIMP interaction:
Why bother switching from GUI to NUI? The answer? Read Chapter 1 (pdf) of the book - the chapter is free.
Here are a few of my personal reasons: 1. I want to buy the next version of the iPad or something like it. 2. I want to buy a new large-screen Internet HD TV.
3. I want to buy a Kinect.
4. I do NOT want to interact with my new TV with a Sony remote. Too many tiny buttons!
5. I do NOT want to interact with my new TV with a keyboard, because it reminds me of...work.
6. Most importantly:
I want to design apps for the people I care about, and others with similar needs:
My mom.
My grandson.
Moms and dads with kids in tow. People with special needs and/or health concerns, and the people who care and guide them. Knowledge sharers and (life-long) learners....
I dropped my nephew off at the airport before the crack of dawn this morning, and took the opportunity to visit Amelie's French Bakery in the NoDa neighborhood of Charlotte (NC). The croissant was awesome and the coffee hit the spot. It occurred to me that I'd never checked out the camera effects features on my cellphone.
Below is a slideshow of my experiments - there are many pictures of the same "scene", with different effects. (The flash was on for some of the pictures, and off for others.)
Today, I hooked up our school's Wii to the newly-installed IWB in the therapy room for the first time, and used it during a session for for a social-skills activity with two students who have autism spectrum disorders. The students helped each other to create their own "Mii" avatars. I had them play the bowling game, and was impressed how this activity elicited social conversation between the students, with minimal effort on my part.
Most of students in the program at Wolfe are in grades 6-12. They have cognitive, language, and motor delays. A good number of the students also have autism spectrum disorders. Some have multiple special needs.
We have found that when our students are provided with interactive activities displayed on the large screen of an IWB, they tend to increase their level of attention to their peers and also communicate more with one-another, as well as with the teachers and staff.
By using an IWB for games at school, we are extending the reach of how this technology can be used with students who have more complex special needs. By providing a means for our students to learn to play positive games, we help them develop important physical, social, and leisure skills that they can use outside the school setting with non-disabled peers and siblings. My hunch is that the games will also help promote cognitive/problem solving skills, too.
NOTE:
The funds to purchase the Wii were donated to our school, but did not cover additional games or accessories. We'd like to purchase Rock Band and Wii Fit. We'd also like to expand our program and purchase an Xbox with a Kinect. An iPad or two would be OK, too : )
If there are any angels out there who'd like to donate funds for our "games" program at Wolfe, please contact me through my Google profile. I will connect you with the appropriate person.
Game designer/developers/researchers/students:
If you are interested in volunteering your efforts to work on a basic cooperative, pro-social game for the Kinect, SMARTTable, or interactive whiteboard, please contact me.
"The Perceptive Pixel display wall, which was switched on this week, is the $100,000 centerpiece of the new Technology Sandbox at the D.H. Hill Library. The sandbox is a room of cutting-edge, interactive hardware that's aimed partly at familiarizing students with the latest high-tech hardware, particularly large displays and gesture-based computing. It was paid for with a federal grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services that is administered by the State Library of North Carolina."
Eirick Wallem Fossan: Multimedia journalist and Flash developer for Aftenposten.
Comment: I usually don't blog about political topics, but I felt that this interactive visualization was an effective method of helping the public understand the information/data shared through the Wikileaks process.
My last post focused on the large multi-touch wall installed at a new library at North Carolina State University. The library was designed for collaborative activities. An interactive "Wordle" displayed on a multi-touch wall for students to explore with peers would probably be worth using!
Public libraries, outfitted with collaborative displays, would also be great places for the people to explore all sorts of visualized data.
If you'd like to learn more about social media, take a look at the following presentation from the recent SoCon11 conference, "How social can news get?", by Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project:
"Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet Project, discusses the Project’s latest findings at the SoCon11 conference. He goes through trends in social media use in the last five years of the Project’s data. He explores how the turn to pervasive, participatory, personal, and portable news changes the way news consumers and producers behave and think about the role of news in their lives." - Pew Internet and American Life Project
Quite a few topics were covered at the conference, which can be found on the SoCon11 Agenda site.
SPENT is an online serious game that is a result of a collaboration between the ad agency McKinney and Urban Ministries of Durham, N.C. The game was launched this month to help increase community awareness about the needs of people who have been negatively impacted by the on-going economic crisis - people who have lost jobs, the under-employed, and the homeless.
The factoids provided in the game are based on data (see link below). One goal for presenting this information is to help players sift through the myths they might be carrying around in their heads about poverty and the realties that many people face every day.
The game offers players the opportunity to take on different roles, make tough decisions, and see the results of these decisions.
"Interaction and interface designers can learn practical lessons from the interfaces in Science Fiction films and television. Though lacking rigorous engagement with users, production designers are nonetheless allowed to develop influential "blue-sky" examples that are inspiring, humorous, prophetic, useful, and can be incorporated into "real" work to make online, mobile, and ubiquitous interfaces more interesting and more successful. This book will share lessons and examples culled from imaginative interfaces free from traditional constraints. In addition, the authors will outline their process of investigation and describe a toolkit for others to make similar explorations into other domains."
Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the new MBA in Design Strategy program at California College of the Arts. Chris Noessel is an interaction design director at Cooper.
Scott Sona Snibbe, an interactive artist, created a large-scale video installation on twenty-nine connected HD displays that curved around at the Tom Bradley International Terminal at the LAX airport in 2010. The video tells a story of groups of people traveling through an airport who eventually begin dancing in interesting ways.
Francesca Penzani was the choreographer for this project. Noah Cunningham was responsible for the cinematography, editing, and post-production.
RELATED SNIBBE INTERACTIVE The Snibbe Interactive website has lots of great photos and videos of the company's work.
"It’s easy to forget that the computer mouse is over 45 years old."
"What’s not as easy to forget is that we’re now collectively getting used to interacting with computers via means and interfaces that have moved way beyond the keyboard and the mouse — the iPhone and Wii being the most prominent examples."
"The truth is that we stand on the verge of a major revolution in the models of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). A revolution that will fly right past academic and into a world of retail, medical, gaming, military, public event, sporting, personal and marketing applications."
"From multi-touch to motion capture to spatial operating environments, over the next 10 years, everything we know about HCI will change."
"Blur is the only conference that is exploring the line of interaction between computers and humans in a substantive, real-world and hands-on way."
"At Blur, vendors, strategists, buyers and visionaries assemble to not only discuss the larger issues of HCI, but also to lay their hands on the latest in HCI technology. Blur is the only forum for a focused, hands-on exploration of the varied technologies evolving in the HCI."
"Come play, investigate, learn and apply at Blur — where we’re changing how you interact with computers forever." -Blur
BLUR Conference Agenda (Note: I added the links to conference participants and/or their organizations. Feel free to leave a comment if you know of any corrections or better links!) Keynotes:
Neuroergonomics: How an Understanding of the Brain is Changing the Practice of Human Factors Engineering - Dr. Kay Stanney, Design Interactive
When I saw the new Radiohead video, Lotus Flower, featuring a dancing Thom Yorke, I wondered how his moves might play out in a dance application for the Kinect or Wii.
Wouldn't it be fun to figure out a way to represent the dance "steps" in this video? Just a thought.
"The Web of Things is a community of developers, researchers, and designers that explore the future of the physical Web. We explore how to leverage Web standards to interconnect all types of embedded devices (sensors, mobile phones, etc), in order to make them easier to use and to integrate in classic Web applications. We aim to build a future Web of devices that is truly open, flexible, and scalable, and we believe Web standards are the best way to do it."
I love to dance- I studied dance through college, and off and on as an adult. I have a DDR (Dance Dance Revolution) game-floor pad somewhere in my attic gathering dust. I'm ready for new challenges.
I'm planning on buying a couple new dance games for the Wii and the Kinect. There is more to this story, given my interest off-the-desktop, post-WIMP HCI (human-computer interaction), interactive multimedia and games, and a career as a school psychologist dedicated to young people with disabilities, I'm excited to see where new technologies, interfaces, and interactions will take us.
So what do the wise men of usability have to say about new ways of interacting with games and other applications?
"Kinect has many great design elements that clearly show that the team (a) knows usability, (b) did user testing, and (c) had management support to prioritize usability improvements, even when they required extra development work." -Jakob Nielsen
Jakob Nielsen, one of the godfathers of usability, shared a few words of wisdom about the Kinect in his 12/27/10 Alertbox post: Kinect Gestural UI: First Impressions. Although he did not review Dance Central, he concludes that the game he reviewed, Kinect Adventures, was fun to play, despite usability problems.
If this is a topic that interests you, I recommend you read Neilsen's post, and also take a look at which are outlined in the post. Also take a look at recent essay Neilsen co-authored with Don Norman, another godfather of usability: Gestural Interfaces: A Step Backwards In Usability
Why is this topic important to me?
I have been involved in the Games for Health and Game Accessibility movement for many years. Lately I've been exploring the OpenKinect project with an aim to create ways of making movement-oriented games accessible for young people with more complex disabilities. For example, there is a need to have dance and movement games modified for students (and adults!) who need wheelchairs or walkers. There are students who have milder mobility challenges who love to dance, and the current games don't address their needs. Some of my students have vision or hearing impairments, too. They deserve a chance to play things designed for the Kinect.
"OpenKinect is an open community of people interested in making use of the amazing Xbox Kinect hardware with our PCs and other devices. We are working on free, open source libraries that will enable the Kinect to be used with Windows, Linux, and Mac."
Note: I currently work as a school psychologist with students up to age 22. My main office is adjacent to a large OT and PT room at Wolfe, a program for students who have special needs. We just had a large interactive whiteboard installed in the room that is begging for us to connect it with the school's Wii, and soon (we hope), a Kinect. If we are going to use dance games to help promote healthy activities among our special students, the games need to be accessible for students with cognitive, motor, and other limitations.
FIRST STEPS Although I can dance, I understand what the world is like through the eyes of many of the young people I work with who have motor coordination and sensory integration problems that interfere with their ability to move and dance, let alone access fast-paced dance games on the Wii or Kinect.
My initial plan is to look at what the new dance games might be like from the view of someone who doesn't know how to dance, and admits that they have "two left feet" - an perhaps, no sense of rhythm. Where would I start?
Wii's Just Dance2 seems to offer some support for learning how to dance through the use of simple movement icons, in the form of outlined figures, that provide information about how to move with the dancer on the screen. As you can see from the video below, the gamer is provided with information about upcoming moves throughout the game.
I decided to take a look at Just Dance2's MIKA "Big Girl" (You Are Beautiful) because some of the adolescent females I work with have weight concerns that interfere with their health. During the teen years, this can become a vicious cycle, resulting in less movement, and less participation with peers in physical activities, such as playing dance games. If a teen has depression as part of this mix, we know that exercise can help, and a fun dance game might be a life-saver, in more ways than one.
The screen shots below show how the movement icons are used in the game:
I thought it would be useful to learn more about the story behind the making of JustDance2. At 2:22, Alexia, the project's usability expert, makes her presence known. From what I can tell, she focused on aspects of the game that would make it more usable for non-dancers, including those with "two left feet", to play the game. (I don't know if there was anyone consulted about accessibility concerns for the game.)
Kinect Dance Central
Dance Central uses a different approach when it comes to "teaching" people how to dance along through the game. It would be interesting to test out Dance Central and JustDance 2 with the same set of people to get a better feel for what works and what doesn't. Below is a video that previews, in split-screen, the interaction that takes place in Dance Central:
Dance Central Full Motion Preview
In Dance Central, gamers are provided with information about the moves through icons that cycle up the right hand side of the screen. The level of dance-coordination to keep up with the moves is challenging at times, even for people who are OK at dancing. Players can select dances according to level of difficulty.
Kinect Usability with Regular People
Steve Cable (CX Partmers) shared his team's look at usability issues related to the Kinect by testing several games, including Dance Central, with groups of people in his article, "Designing for XBox Kinect - a usability study". The quote below is from the Steve's article:
"We’ve loved playing with the Kinect. There’s no doubt that the game play is lots of fun. In-game menus are a barrier to that fun. Kinect should allow players to move through menus quickly and compensate for inaccuracy.
We felt the Kinect would benefit from some standardised global controls – much like a controller uses the A button to select and the B button to move backwards. We also think it needs a more responsive pause gesture – one that doesn’t interfere with the user’s game play.
Most of our participants found the Dance Central menu to be more effective, more efficient and more satisfying to use. Here are our recommendations for designing a Kinect menu interface:
Allow users to make selections through positive gestures, rather than timed positions
Place options on a single axis to make them easier and quicker to select
Allow users to control menus with the game pad if they prefer
Use large easy to read text
Don’t make users scroll through options unnecessarily – it takes too long
Users will be distracted if used in a social setting – test your menus in a social context to see if they are prone to errors
Avoid the cursor metaphor, it’s not what gamers are used to seeing in game menus, and makes it harder to implement alternative joypad controls"
Below are screen shots that provide examples of how the movement icons are displayed in Dance Central:
Moms and dads with kids in tow.
