The design space of body games: technological, physical, and social design.
In Proceedings of the 2013 ACM annual conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3365-3374., 2013
The past decade has seen an increased focus on body movement in computer games. We take a step fu... more The past decade has seen an increased focus on body movement in computer games. We take a step further to look at body games: games in which the main source of enjoyment comes from bodily engagement. We argue that for these games, the physical and social settings become just as important design resources as the technology. Although all body games benefit from an integrated design approach, the social and physical setting become particularly useful as design resources when the technology has limited sensing capabilities. We develop our understanding of body games through a literature study and a concrete design experiment with designing multiplayer games for the BodyBug, a mobile device with limited sensing capabilities. Although the device was designed for free and natural movements, previous games fell short in realizing this design ideal. By designing the technology function together with its physical and social context, we were able to overcome device limitations. One of the games was subsequently incorporated in its commercial release.
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Papers by Jin Moen
The research question asked in this work is: Which communicative aspects and properties of human full-body movement are important when designing for movement-based interaction, and how could such design be accomplished? This question has been dealt with through carrying out an explorative study of people experiencing dance-based human movement. The informants used were participants on a dance course called Physical Expression. On the basis of this study the following aspects of human movement were identified and discussed: Movement imitation, Movement generation, Natural movements, The meaning of movement, Personal space, Self-confidence, and Movement literacy. These notions were further explored, in relation to movement-based interaction design, through the design and implementation of an interaction concept and a research prototype called BodyBug. BodyBug can be described as an artefact that initiates and maintains bodily movements through its need to be fed with movement input. It gives the users a possibility to create and explore three-dimensional movements within a personal interaction space, both individually and in groups. BodyBug is a small device but does not necessary create small-scale interaction and movements.
The main findings from this research can be summarised in four theoretical notions that are related to human movement as a dynamic and communicative process: Movement Literacy, Personal Interaction Space, Imitate-React-Express and Social Acceptability. These notions reflect aspects of human movement such as the ability to verbalise, describe, sense and express intentions through human movement; the physical and emotional space we create when moving; the naturalness and understanding of movement; and finally, the social impact of movement. The design and implementation process of the interaction concept vi KinAesthetic Movement Interaction
exemplifies how we can apply knowledge and physical experiences of human movement in concrete design for movement-based interaction. The design process of BodyBug is therefore described as a holistic design process. It also argues for the importance of, and need for, multidisciplinary competencies and contributions throughout the whole design process.
This work has shown that making use of movement as interaction modality means to provide possibilities for getting to know one’s own movement pattern and thus utilising the kinaesthetic sense and kinaesthetic awareness. However, since movement-based interaction is still in its early phase, we need more experiences and physical examples of this kind of interaction in order to develop an increased knowledge of human movement as design material. We also need to further investigate how movement-based interaction is experienced, and to continue the search for the essence and physical grounding of human movement in relation to technology and computational artefacts. Some of the biggest challenges are to design for movement-based interaction without loosing the aspects of individual preferences and differences in movement, and to preserve the spontaneity and ambiguity in human movement. As shown in this thesis, one approach to deal with these issues is to design for the pleasure of motion.