Alan’s UnoJoy! project that allows you to turn almost anything into a game controller (great for teaching rapid prototyping!) has just been featured on the frontpage of instructables.com and their newsletter:
Here is the initial video that started it all:
The Exertion Games Lab is featured on tonight’s Catalyst program on the ABC1. Catalyst is a science program “that sees science as a dynamic force changing our world”, and will feature the Joggobot project. We are on Thursday, 24 May 8pm and Friday, 25 May 11am, Australian Eastern Standard Time (Melbourne).
Joggobot explores how robots might make exercise such as jogging more engaging in the future. More details.
The Exertion Games Lab’s “Press Nose to Start” event drew a large crowd to celebrate Exertion Games and gave industry and academia a chance to interact to further the field of digital play. Alan and Harry gave great speeches on the future of digital play, and the students of the Radical Games class showcased their provocative game designs that were both novel and made a contribution to our understanding of games. The lab members showed their latest game projects, and used this opportunity to gather feedback from , but also inspired industry in terms of what the future of games should be. Lastly, we celebrated our 8 publications, 4 interactive demonstrations and 1 honourable mention at CHI 2012, and upcoming media coverage in The Age and on ABC1. We thank all our friends and family for supporting us during this time of long-hours and weekends in the lab!
REMINDER:
7 PM – 10 PM // Monday // 21 May 2012
RMIT, 9.1.27
On Monday, the Exertion Games Lab is hosting a special get-together Open House event to celebrate 8 publications (including a Best Paper Honorable Mention) at the CHI conference in the USA and showcase some of our latest creations. Come play a collection of strange and wonderful digital games that focus on physical play!
Featuring both exciting new projects from the lab and games from the Radical Games class as well as international award-winning installations, these games will exert you while also confuse and delight the senses. Bring your friends and ready your noses. Everyone is welcome, pizza provided.
Special thanks to Alan Chatham and Harry Lee for organizing the evening.
Location:
RMIT, Building 9, Level 1, Room 27, Bowen Lane. http://exertiongameslab.
Come along and play some games!
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller and his co-authors received a Best Paper Honorable Mention from the ACM for the “Balancing Exertion Experiences” long paper that was presented at CHI 2012. This means the paper was in the top 5%.
David Altimira from HitLab NZ is visiting the Exertion Games Lab for 1 week, and as part of this, he is giving a talk about HitLab NZ and his research there. In particular, he is interested in getting feedback on his current PhD on Exertion Games.
Tue, 22 May, 1-2pm, Exertion Games Lab, RMIT University, 9.1.27
Abstract:
Exertion games introduce engaging elements from traditional games to physical activity routines. They can help to encourage people into doing more physical exercise and therefore bringing the mental, health and social benefits. They have become popular due to the latest generation of gaming consoles which support more natural input. However, there are few theoretical frameworks or models for designing “good” exertion games. The goal of this PhD research is develop theoretical guidelines that can be used to easily develop effective exertion games. These guidelines will be developed by exploring the interrelationships between game and user experience within the context of sports focusing on (i) balancing play between people with/without disabilities in order to make the play more engaging and (ii) social play minimizing the negative effects associated with crowding, social pressure and shyness. Several prototype games will be designed based on these guidelines and user studies conducted to valid the model.
Bio:
David is a doctoral candidate at HIT Lab NZ and and his research interests are exertion interfaces, in particular exergames, full body interaction, gaming in general and computer vision. David studied Computer Science at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona where he also completed a master of Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media. In 2010 he went to Chicago to do some research in the Learning Technologies Group within the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Electronic Visualization Laboratories and in 2011 he did an internship at the HIT Lab NZ, where he started working with Kinect. In his spare time David enjoys doing any kind of sport such as basketball, tennis, running, swimming or biking and he likes to be in contact with the nature and do some hiking.
Chad, Eberhard, Danielle and Floyd are back from CHI 2012 in Austin, Texas, the largest and premier conference in human-computer interaction. It was a big success for the Exertion Games Lab, with Chad exhibiting Hanging off a Bar, Danielle Light Arrays and hipDisk, and Eberhard Joggobot. Overall, we presented 8 publications from members of the lab. Chad was also offered a PhD place and a job with Microsoft, and Chad and Eberhard also won a game prize. We also held an Exertion Games Lab networking event, Danielle gave a great alt.chi talk, Danielle and Floyd were asked to co-chair Interactivity again next year and we received a Best Paper Honourable Mention for “Balancing Exertion Experiences“. Lastly, we presented our games work in a workshop on Future Game User Research, and promoted the lab to a lot of very smart and interesting people.
After having 8 publications and exhibiting 4 interactive projects, the Exertion Games Lab team who flew to Austin, TX for CHI 2012 is back in Melbourne to share their experiences with you! Visit the lab for a brief rundown of the trip and ask any questions you might have to prepare you for CHI next year. Everyone is welcome!
Where: Exertion Games Lab, RMIT (Building 9, Level 1, Room 27|32)
When: Wednesday 16th May, @ 3-4PM
7 PM – 10 PM // Monday // 21 May 2012
RMIT, 9.1.27
Next Monday, the Exertion Games Lab is hosting a special get-together event to celebrate 8 publications at the CHI conference in the USA and showcase some of our latest creations. Come play a collection of strange and wonderful digital games that focus on physical play!
Featuring both exciting new projects from the lab and games from the Radical Games class as well as international award-winning installations, these games will exert you while also confuse and delight the senses. Bring your friends and ready your noses. Everyone is welcome, pizza provided.
Special thanks to Alan Chatham and Harry Lee for organizing the evening.
Location:
RMIT, Building 9, Level 1, Room 27, Bowen Lane. http://exertiongameslab.
Come along and play some games!
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller from the Exertion Games Lab has been invited to speak at the “Next Generation Multimedia Research and Development” event on 2&3 May 2012 at New York University’s Abu Dhabi campus.
Josh on guitar, visually amplified by our interactive helmet. Would it enhance the spectator experience of a musical audience? We will found out when we start performing with it on the street. Next stage: hooking it up to an accelerometer, so we can make it respond to physical movement!
We will be having another paper editing session:
Thursday, 26 April, 11.45-12.45 in the Exertion Games Lab.
We will be focusing on Related Work: if you have a Related Work section of one of your papers you would like to get feedback on, please print out ca. 6 copies, double-spaced, and bring them along. We will then edit each others’ papers, to make them even greater! Everyone welcome.
Ruth Huerga will be giving a talk about her prior work on
Tuesday, 24 April, 1-2pm in the Exertion Games Lab.
Ruth Huerga is doing a Masters at RMIT and spends a lot of time in the lab as she brings in expertise in interactive storytelling and embodied poetry, currently working on a project with children in hospital.
Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller is giving a guest lecture in the Research and Practice lecture series organised by Chris Barker on Thu, 12 Apr 2012, at RMIT in Bldg. 13, Room 1, from 5.30-6.30pm. Floyd will be talking about how the Exertion Games Lab’s games are not as much ready-made solutions to problems, but rather research vehicles to generate knowledge. This knowledge then allows others, such as game designers to be guided towards their own solutions and inspires industry towards thinking outside their comfort zone.
Kalonica Quigley and her team, who are currently working on a new health and safety game with Stefan Greuter in the Exertion Games Lab, received an “Honorable Mention” for their “Once Upon A Spacetime” PC/Mac game at the Independent Games Festival in San Francisco, USA:
We will be having another abstract editing session!
Wednesday, 11 April, 12.30-1.30 in the Exertion Games Lab.
If you have an abstract you’d like to get feedback on, please print out ca. 6 copies, double-spaced, and bring them along. We will then edit each others’ abstracts, to make them even greater! Everyone welcome.
Chad has been interviewed by The Age, Australia’s major newspaper about his work in the lab.