Human Computer Interaction - Blog 5

Final Project!

                The end of the semester is around the corner and it’s about that time of the year when we get swamped with final projects and assignments. After discussing many areas of Human Computer Interaction and all of its related topics, I can say that I have learned a great deal. In last week’s lecture we looked at three different themes that we would have to choose for our final project, they were: Change, Glance and Time. This is quite interesting because in groups we will be all working on accomplishing very different goals.

Change

                Looking at the first theme of change, I often think about a person’s behaviour or attitude towards something. Change can mean many things, it can be physical, emotional and mechanical or almost anything that alters from its original form. For the purpose of the assignment the groups who will be working on this particular theme will have to focus more on an individual’s behaviour. Some of the examples that a few students were describing in class would include exercise or learning games, where a player changes either by improving an existing skill or learning a new skill. Some examples I can think of in today’s gaming world would include games like Brain Age or a more physical game such as Wii Fit. Working in video game retail and seeing children purchase the Nintendo DS and buy Brain Age, I’ve often had to explain how it helped them learn skills. A game like Brain Age starts at an extremely low level so that children are able to adapt to it well. Children of the lower elementary grade levels can also learn skills such as math and spelling. Wii Fit brought something quite remarkable to that generation of gaming because it was the first time we were able to play an exercise game on a console. Women in their mid-20s-30s found it extremely interesting and would often be the consumers of this game. They would talk about how they were able to set certain goals and the game would track their progress. For the sake of this final project, I believe groups that are using the Kinect Sensor would probably find this to be the most suitable hardware to work with. The amount of things that we can do with the Kinect’s technology can bring change in almost all physical and mechanical forms.

Glance

                The theme of glance, at first I had no idea what this even meant. After talking about glance in our lecture I gained the understanding that it had a lot to do with the player’s eye movement and the screen of viewpoint of the game. Things such as the User Interface and more specifically the HUD would be in my opinion the focus of this theme. Thinking of game like the Nintendo 64 title The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time, the dashboard and HUD were quite complex. It was one of the games that in my opinion introduced complexity in a games user interface. Having the C-buttons mapped out on the top of the screen with a start menu opening the ability to see many different items was quite complicated. This theme would be quite difficult to complete in my opinion. The mission for the students involved in this project is to design a personal game user interface tailored to their needs using novel technologies as stated in the project outline. Once again I can only really think of people using the Kinect hardware to do this. I do this imagining some playing an FPS game with the characters hands and or gun on the screen moving to the movement of the player with the Kinect sensor. I wonder to myself how this can be done through a brain sensing hardware, what are some existing ideas? And how is it even possible to tie in the connections with both the player’s brain waves and physical virtual code. Seems a little too simple? But I say this with very little thought involved. After all, the theme that my group has is Time.

Time

                Time is a broad term that can be manipulated in many ways both complex and extremely simple. When I think of times in some of my favourite games, I think of the nerve wrecking puzzles of games like Prince of Persia on the Playstation 2, where I had to pull levers and climb to the top of buildings in a short period of time. Such an easy task that I had to do under pressure. Or perhaps in a more recent one of my favourite games, Sonic Generations, I had to complete one of the levels known as the Green Hill Zone in under one minute. It was the first and easiest level of the game, but even a time challenge like that could take hours to perfect. I personally hate being timed when I have to complete a challenge. In my preferred game genres, I prefer to explore and understand and search every nook and cranny. Since I am in fact doing the theme of time for my final project I have to think about how my group and I are going to implement it using our hardware. We were given the hardware that uses the brain as its sensor. Something I still fully don’t understand nor do I have a clue about how to work with. It will be interesting to use these things. In previous video lectures we were given video links that showed how Human Computer Interaction can change in the future in regards to how we play games. We’ve already gained the technology to play games without controllers and use our physical motor skills with the Kinect. Most devices these days have eliminated the use of buttons have all become voice activated or touch activated. Based on some of the design inspiration questions we were presented with I think the sleep based game would be pretty interesting. I personally have sleep issues and think that this could actually help maybe kids and be developed to be some sort of serious game used in the medical industry.

Image References

 

[Ocarina of Time HUD screenshot].Retrieved March 5, 2013, from: URL:(http://isaiahnewbold.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/zelda-ocarina-of-time-15.jpg)

[Sonic Generations – Green Hill Zone Classic].Retrieved March 5, 2013, from: URL:( http://press2reset.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/SonicGenerationsScreen1.jpg) 

[Wii Fit Screenshot].Retrieved March 5, 2013, from: URL:(http://i-cdn.apartmenttherapy.com/uimages/unplggd/2008_04_29%20wii_fit.jpg)

 

Human Computer Interaction - Blog 4

The Human Factor

                So for the past few weeks of lectures, we have been heavily focusing on different types of interfaces and generally talking about human computer interaction. This week, we learned something different, the human factors. Basically it talked all about us, our eyes and ears and our capabilities and limitations. There was a lot of basic knowledge that we already know about humans, such as the fact that we are in fact limited when it comes to our processing capabilities. In our lecture we had learned that an analogy comparing humans to computers was made based on an idea that humans have input and output systems. I would assume this mainly talks about our brains and how we think and process information and result in some kind of output. We have created computers and heavily rely on computers, but we are in fact not computers, and this understanding is something that game designers will have to think about when developing. A lot about understanding the human side of things involves digging further into psychology, something I had not really expected to look into in this field. Our lecture informs us that in order to successfully design interactive systems, we should understand the relationship and be aware of the connection between the field of psychology and technology.

Human Senses

                One important thing that game developers should be knowledgeable about is the human eye and its vision system. This particular area does not really interest me, though I can see how it is important. It was something that I had seen twice now in two different courses. Both of these courses were taught by Dr. Bill Kapralos. In our video lecture things like rods and cones within our vision system were talked about. I specifically remember an example of a person sleeping in a dark room and suddenly opening the blinds to be temporarily blinded. Definitely something that occurs to most individuals almost on a daily basis, this also happens to me sometimes during the winter when I’ve been outside looking at the snow for so long and I suddenly go inside and I see everything dark and kind of green. The first example is a result of the rods in our eyes succumbing to light saturation; you can also not see any colors because of the cones in our eyes. Cones are different because they are less sensitive to lights and instead will intake different wavelengths which allow us to see color. I would assume when an individual is color blind, there is some damage done to the cones in a person’s eye? We did hear about this briefly but my curiosity will probably lead me to further look into it, mainly because I live with a color blind individual. One thing that is true about cones as we learned in our lecture is that they are not necessary for peripheral vision.

                Another extremely important human sense is hearing, and the overall ability for a human to recognize sounds. The ear to me seems like a very complicated system; even in the Sound & Audio class I took a couple years ago I had never fully been able to understand it. One thing that is evident about the human hearing system is that it gives us the basic instinct to gather information about our surrounding environment. Sounds can be heard at different pitches, different distances and volumes. Though we did in fact touch up on this particular sense in the lectures, I am still having a bit of difficulty understanding how the ear actually works.

                Touching things is another human sense, one that has actually greatly contributed to the functionality of the gaming industry today. This is seen also with most of the small devices that exist today such as tablets and smartphones. Instead of touching physical buttons we can now drag and slide and wave our hands all over our gadgets to perform special tasks. We learned in our video lecture that with touch there are three types of receptors. Thermoreceptors can detect different temperatures (hence the word thermo) which help us determine in our everyday lives what is hot and what is cold. Imagine a life where we didn’t have such receptors? We would probably be no better than robots. Without Thermoreceptors, taking a shower would be a lot different since we wouldn’t be able to tell how hot or cold water is that touches us. The next receptor is called the Nociceptor, which can be summarized to represent pain. If a person were to touch and apply pressure to something really sharp they would feel pain, but if we did not have these receptors we could pretty much do anything and not notice whether we are hurt or not. Mechanoreceptors respond mainly to pressure, this can be seen throughout the human body. Different areas of our bodies can be more sensitive than others. These factors would probably vary with different strengths of muscle and bone in different areas. This particular sense interested me a lot because it got me thinking of what makes us human when compared to a robot or artificial intelligence.

Mind & Movement

A lot of the technological interfaces that exist today such as Kinect and the Playstation Move heavily rely on human motor skills to function. Everything we do in life involves us moving, even the simple things like sleeping which involves us being in an unaware state involves movement. Breathing moves our upper body, our mouths move and most people that sleep usually move around and shift for comfort without really knowing. I use this example since it primarily is present in my life. I sometimes find myself on the floor of my room because I would roll off the bed. In our video lecture we learned that movement is measured in two factors, Time and Accuracy. Movement heavily ties in with the human brain as well. We only perform options because we receive information from what we see, do or hear, we process this information and output a result of movement. In video games this is present when we have to react to a situation in a game and press certain buttons. I can more specifically apply this to fighting games, where players must try and understand other players and try to figure out what moves they will make to block. It seems very simple, but now that I think of it, there is a lot of brain processing going on while we are making extremely quick decisions to press buttons and perform certain inputs. What makes the human brain very interesting is that the more we repeat certain tasks we will slowly become better and make these decisions even quicker. The ability to defeat someone in a video game gets easier the more you practice, a very simple concept.

 

Human Memory

                We have learned in depth that there are three branches of our human memory system. It can be broken down to short term, long term and sensory. What does this mean? Sensory information as explained in our video lecture works like a buffer that constantly replaces information. The type of information would be visual, hearing and haptic. Short term memory is something every person goes through almost every moment. We hold information for short periods of time while we discover certain things. These are forms of information that I personally think one of two things generally happen. You will either forget about it completely, or it gets converted into long term memory. The concept of long term memory is quite simple, it is information that we can keep in our heads for a long time. I vision it as a memory that we can recall upon at all times. This is heavily relied on when it comes to education and studying for exams.

We’re Not Perfect!

                One thing that really makes us human is our imperfections. We have things such as mistakes, emotions, forgetting and sometimes medical conditions that effect our senses and even motor skills. Emotion is probably one of the strongest in my opinion, if a person is having a bad day they will often choose not to go about performing certain information processing and even carrying out motor skills. This can also affect memories as sometimes our emotions will attempt to block out what we remember in order to recover from something. From a positive perspective, motivating emotions can improve a human’s overall brain processing and motor skill performance. With these factors effecting humans every day, I think designers should be able to create interfaces that do not wear down the human senses that much. When referring to video games specifically, we tend to want to have fun and visit the settings and set up as little as possible. It is really good that games available today can vary in different cognitive thinking levels. You can have games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age that you can make your own decision in completing storyline quests and you can also have less content heavy games such as the Call of Duty franchise which requires less decision making. Though there are key differences. In the RPG style games your reaction times may be slower because you have to think more long term about what you want to do. The shooter style games you will be making a rapid amount of quick decisions, moving and reacting to different quick actions within a game.

Human Computer Interaction - Blog 3

The Past & Present

                In my previous entries, I have spoken about my early experience with video games. I am quite excited that in this week’s video lecture we were able to take a look at games and game interfaces of the past. The first thing that was discussed in the lecture was Pong, a classic arcade game that was created way before I was even born. It is something my uncle owned on his very old DOS computer and I would often go and play it. To be honest, I never found the game very fun. We also talked about Pac-man, a game that a lot of people still play today. It was the first game to introduce joy sticks and give more than two directions of movement and also one of the first maze games that existed for its time. Pac-Man was also a very attractive game for its time because it really showed a lot of vibrant colors and was quite addictive to build a high score for. The first time I had ever played Pac-Man was when my father first bought my brother and I a few floppy disc games such as Pac-Man, Gremlins, Pinball and Space Invaders. I personally had an addiction to pinball and often dreamed as a kid of having my very own pinball machine in our basement. Looking back upon this I do not feel the same way. 

Peripherals throughout the Ages

These games all had very basic interfaces since they were played with the keyboard. I was not around much for the joystick era of video games, until much later when I went to my first arcade. The first time I had ever experienced arcade controls was when I played the original Street Fighter at a local arcade, which I believed is closed down now. I understand that this was in fact a console game at the time for both the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis, but this was the first time. Console game interfaces have always been my favourite, I’ve always enjoyed using a controller as I have stated in my previous entries. The Nintendo Entertainment System was the first system that I owned. I used to watch my older brother play Super Mario Brothers 3 and occasionally join in and try and beat the levels with him. This was sometimes an annoying process as we did not have the save game system. I had never been able to finish games like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and I believe The Legend of Zelda. This changed later on with the release of emulation. The NES controller was very basic and after a long period of time I remember it being very uncomfortable and sharp. It was simple how they only had two main action buttons and a D-pad. What’s interesting to me about this is how that formula still exists today in the most current generation of gaming whether it is the Wii Remote or even the Nintendo DS handhelds. The only improvements would be the addition of more buttons. Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis’s controller design was greatly improved when they made the controllers curved. Both were much more comfortable and even had more buttons. The Super Nintendo controller was something I had to adapt to since I was obsessed with fighting games. Playing Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter and learning different combinations to perform special moods often left my thumbs in pain, especially when trying to make a down-forward motion. I am somewhat ignoring the development of both the Power Glove and The Zapper gun used in duck hunt, simply because I did not own them. My thoughts on the Zapper Gun have me questioning how Nintendo may have been able to create the Wii controls much earlier. If you look at the Nintendo Wii today, playing shooting games feels almost similar to the duck hunt controls. One peripheral that I really enjoyed as a child was the Super Scope Bazooka gun available for the SNES. I would spend hours on this game just because the peripheral was so cool, it came with a scope and it rested on your shoulder.

Generation V

 Following this came my personal favourite generation of controllers, the fifth generation Nintendo 64 and Sony Playstation controllers were both in my opinion the best controllers of all time. The fifth generation of gaming was remarkable since it first introduced the 3D graphics that we were all impressed by during that time period. The Nintendo 64 game pad, though it was extremely large and had many buttons was a personal favourite of mine. The design in the controller’s look and feel was thought out very well in terms of how you would hold it from two different “spikes” to use either the D-pad or the newly introduced analog stick. The analog stick was a huge improvement since a lot of people had to get used to moving in more than just 2 directions. Playing games such as Banjo-Kazooie and The Legend of Zelda series fully implemented the use of all the buttons in a creative and comfortable manner. My personal favourite was the Z-targeting system in the Zelda games. One interesting feature that was also introduced later in the system’s life was the vibration. In the Nintendo 64 game pad it was an add-on called “The Rumble Pack” which was really big and heavy. The Playstation controller later developed a version called the Dualshock which implemented the vibrations in the controller itself and adding two analog sticks. The Sony controller is still being used to this date, and although a lot of people do complain about it comparing with the Xbox 360 gamepad, the Dualshock series to me is the best.

Generation VI & VII

                When the Nintendo Gamecube was developed, the company had also designed a new funny looking controller, which was not as preferred by most gamers. The L and R buttons were very large and sometimes uncomfortable to press, the Z-button was in somewhat of an awkward position and The C buttons had now turned into a four directional analog stick. A D-pad was also included in the controller but most games had barely used it. It was at this time when the console gaming industry had been taken over by three major companies, Sony, Nintendo and the newcomer Microsoft. The Xbox gamepad was disliked by a lot of people that I grew up with. I had never given it a chance due to its massive size and addition of odd buttons. It was at this time that I had chosen the Playstation 2 controller which was simply a modified version of the original Playstation Dualshock. The strange thing about the sixth generation is that there were not that many peripherals created for them. With this I mean products similar to the zapper gun, power glove, super scope etc. The only one that I can personally remember is the Dance Dance Revolution gamepad that was rarely available. If we take a look at how much the human interaction with consoles today are we can analyze a large amount of changes and improvements. Video games of today are not as catered to controller based gamers as they were in the previous years, though competitive players still prefer the controllers more. A new degree of entertainment was reached when the seventh generation console Nintendo Wii introduced its motion based controllers. There had not been a huge graphic improvement with the system but its motion is what sold it. Players of all ages and types were able to enjoy games such as Wii Sports and more recent titles such as Just Dance.

Devices such as the Kinect and the Playstation Move were also recently released in order to compete and join in on the motion era of gaming. Today’s devices are heavily influenced by touchscreens, motion sensors and even speech and camera recognition. It is interesting to see what the new generation of consoles will bring to the table with gaming. Personally I prefer the traditional controller style, though with the recent release of the WiiU, I am slowly starting to enjoy the touch screen and multi feature aspect.

Image Citations

[Nintendo Controller Generations].Retrieved January 28, 2013, from: URL :( http://images.mylot.com/userImages/images/postphotos/2109125.jpg)

[Nintendo GameCube Controller].Retrieved January 28, 2013, from: URL :( http://www.8-bitcentral.com/images/nintendo/gameCube/controllerFront.jpg)

[Super Scope].Retrieved January 28, 2013, from: URL :( http://www.90smovies.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/super_scope.jpg)

[Wii Sports Advertisement].Retrieved January 28, 2013, from: URL :( http://www.thedrive.net/funstuff/images/wii-sports-wallpaper_thumb.jpg)

[Wii U Zelda Tech Demo].Retrieved January 28, 2013, from: URL :( http://static-imgs-acf.hereisthecity.com/20110721//112/wiiu_26488.jpg)