The LiveCity project are hosting a workshop at SaCoNet 2013 in Paris on:
You can join us on the 17th June and more information can be found at: http://www.lissi.fr/saconet2013/livecity
DEADLINE EXTENDED: May 20th, 2013
Workshop on “Entertainment Technology in Transportation against Frustration, Aggression and Irrationality”
August 27, 2013, Munich, Germany
Held in conjunction with 15th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (MobileHCI 2013)
http://workshops.icts.sbg.ac.at/mobilehci2013
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Call for Papers
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Position Paper Submission Deadline: Monday, May 20th, 2013 (extended) Notification on Position Papers: Monday, June 10th, 2013 Workshop Date: Tuesday, August 27th, 2013
Using transportation technology (e.g., a car, plane, or traveling in public transportation) can be frustrating due to crowded streets, delays, and other travelers. Games & entertainment technology offer potential to resolve these negative user experiences. Frustration may lead to aggression and negative experiences resulting in irrational behaviors.
The workshop on Entertainment in Transportation will be a forum of multi-disciplinary discussion on how to combine research and design in both the entertainment and the transportation domain. The one-day workshop will include break-out sessions including the creation of entertainment and game concepts for future transportation. Contributions are invited from all areas of mobile HCI, games & entertainment, as well as transportation contexts such as cars, planes, buses, trains, or space ships.
Topics
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Submissions are invited on (but not limited to) the following topics:
- Entertainment applications to reduce frustration, aggression and irrationality
- Game and entertainment application concepts, prototypes, and systems that suit a certain transportation context
- Studies on informing transportation entertainment system design
- Social aspects of gaming in the transportation domain, including passengers as well as personnel
- Interaction modalities for transportation entertainment
- Research addressing the social aspects of transportation entertainment
- Usage of transport context data as game input
Submissions
To participate authors please submit by May 20th, 2013 a position paper (no longer than 4 pages in the CHI extended abstract format) about their research containing the following aspects:
- The authors’ research perspective on entertainment and gaming in transportation and how to improve the situation of travelers through gaming and entertainment, including a description of a game and entertainment application (if applicable) or phenomenon they are working on or have studied.
- A reflection on the future challenges concerning entertainment in transportation that should be addressed by mobile HCI research.
- The way the authors aim at communicating their experience to the workshop participants (e.g., demo, interactive talk). Authors are invited to include an URL linking to digital documentation of a game, artifact, tool, service, project or study that offers a particular view on entertainment in transportation.
Submissions can, but do not have to be anonymized. Please submit your work via email to mobilehci2013@hciunit.org
Interactive presentations (such as demos) are highly encouraged and will be favored in the reviewing process.
We look forward to your contribution!
Workshop organizers:
David Wilfinger (University of Salzburg) Alexander Meschtscherjakov (University of Salzburg)
Manfred Tscheligi (University of Salzburg)
Petra Sundström (University of Salzburg)
Dalila Szostak (Intel
Roderick McCall (University of Luxembourg)
Well done to Dundee University, my one time summer employer and where I did my BSc is one of four Scottish Universities to be in the top 100 according to a global ranking of scientific performance conducted by Leiden University. The Scottish Universities in the top 100 are: St Andrews (47th), Dundee (79th), Edinburgh (84th) and Aberdeen (91st). I don’t usually care too much for these rankings but being in the top 100 is pretty good, so well done to all of them. I hope that this will encourage companies to consider working more with Scottish Universities and hence help to build on the talent of excellent researchers and graduates that are available there. More information about the story can be found at The Scotsman.
Also don’t forget where I work now, The University of Luxembourg, we may be comparatively new but offer the chance to work with leading researchers/professors in a range of domains. Also we have excellent links to local and international companies. Check out www.securityandtrust.lu for more info.
Our paper on Using Gamification and Metaphor to Design a Mobility Platform for Commuters (McCall, Koenig and Kracheel) has now been published in The International Journal of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction.
Abstract: In this paper the authors explain the use of gamification as a way to optimize mobility patterns within a heavily congested European City. They explore this from two perspectives, first by outlining a gaming concept and secondly by explaining how the use of a mobility game that took place in two locations can be used to explore incentives and design issues.
For those interested in the I-GEAR project why not check out our recent media appearances. We will shortly be conducting a study of commuter study in Luxembourg, so please feel free to sign up! You get paid a small amount for taking part and have the chance to win some cool kit.
Here is a list of the main papers from this website that explore using gamification to reduce traffic congestion. The work is drawn from research in how to apply vehicular networking technology to reduce traffic congestion. The first paper explores legal and ethical issues, the second explores the use of gamification to asses game design issues, while the third looks at early ideas to use gamification to reduce traffic congestion. The fourth paper explores a simulator that will be used in the I-GEAR project. Our intention is really to bring together gamification with in-car applications while also exploring novel user interface techniques.
Although the workshop has yet to take place the papers which will be presented at it are now available from the gamification-research.org website.
There are a number of interesting papers and presentations from those exploring particular gamified approaches through to how to use gamification as a methodology in a field trial.
Although not fully announced yet the full papers deadline for AutoUI (Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular applications) is the 1st June 2013. This years conference is in Eindhoven from the 27th to the 30th of October.
More information can be found on the conference website.
Last year we presented a short position paper at the “Workshop on the Car as An Arena for Gaming” which was held during MobileHCI 2012. It was chosen as the best paper from the workshop and we have subsequently published a full version outlining the results from the study featured here and from MobileHCI itself in the International Journal of Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (to appear).
Abstract: In this paper we provide an overview of the I-GEAR (incentives and gaming environments for automobile routing) project that is intended to reduce traffic congestion in Luxembourg through the use of persuasive gaming. In order to illustrate some of the issues involved we also present an outline concept of a live game in which we propose to encourage the workshop participants to take part. If a sufficient number of workshop participants take part, this real life game could even be used as a small scale study within the project.
File: Reducing Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming
The journal paper will be available online soon (we have just received the proof to check over).
Citation: McCall, R., Kracheel, M., and V. Koenig. Reducing Traffic Congestion Through Pervasive Gaming. Position Paper from the Workshop on The Car As an Arena for Gaming at MobileHCI 2012. San Francisco, USA.
In addition to the driver diaries work our car simulator is taking more rapid shape. Although a large part of it has been running since last year there is always more to be done or improvements to be made.
A very early screenshot from 2012 of our driving simulator. The image shows the early images of the Kirchberg area in Luxembourg without textures.
The platform is designed to be modular and has at it’s core a component known as the despatcher. This essentially allows us to use a range of 3D environments, right now we are using Speed Dreams which is an open source car gaming engine but will shortly support another platform as well. In addition we plan to support networked driving simulations. Also you can add in a range of devices including tablets and eye trackers. As with all such projects you constantly discover small bottlenecks and problems, usually related to some underlying development issue such as threading (neither Python nor LiveCode really support this properly). We use Python for example to build the underlying server (despatcher) while LiveCode is used to develop the front-end that is used by the person controlling the simulation (also known as the evaluator).Python can fake threading to a point, but you end up with programmes running on one core. Which given the high volume of data we are dealing with is not a good idea, so we moved to a multi-process approach which again also introduced some problems. LiveCode on the other hand while making implementing sockets and GUIs easy has some rather odd quirks including no real or even fake support for threads built-in which can cause a lot of problems, anyway more on these issues in a more extended post.
Overtime the platform will add a realistic car cockpit, multiple drivers (in a networked simulation) and a range of devices. Also the graphics will be significantly improved for example by adding textures to buildings, other cars and additional details.
You can find more info on the architecture in this paper: Towards a Simple Driving Simulator