Tangible Play talk by Elise van den Hoven

On Thursday, 10 Nov 2011, the Exertion Games Lab proudly hosted a pizza-catered talk on Tangible Play by the brilliant Elise van den Hoven, which also marked the final day of her visit to the lab. We thank her for all the hard work she put in and all the insights she provided to each one of the projects in the lab. By having visiting researchers spending their sabbaticals in the lab, we ensure a holistic approach to research and international outlook on the current trends in the research community.

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Research Talk: Tangible Play + Pizza

Thursday, 10 Nov 2011, 5-6pm

Exertion Games Lab, RMIT 9.1.27 (exertiongameslab.org/about)

The Exertion Games Lab is fortunate to have Elise van den Hoven from the Netherlands visiting RMIT and talk about her design research on Tangible Interaction in Games and Play. Her talk is entitled Tangible Play and will cover the following three studies: 1- TouchMeDare (see picture below), an interactive festival installation, 2- Game balancing to help weaker players in a board game, and 3- Marbowl, a moving marble bowl.

To celebrate the occasion, we’ll provide free pizza (organized by our Italian Michele, thanks!)

Elise’s visit to Melbourne was supported by funds from the Interaction Design Group at the University of Melbourne, where she will also be talking on the 4 Nov 2011 (see below).

About Elise

Dr. Elise van den Hoven MTD received her PhD in 2004, based on design research into tangible interaction and remembering, executed at Philips Research. Since 2003 she has been assistant professor at the User-Centered Engineering group, Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. Elise has been working on tangible interaction and remembering with a user-centered design research approach since 1999. In 2007 and 2008 she chaired the only dedicated conference on tangible interaction: Tangible, Embedded and Embodied Interaction, and since then she has been on its steering committee.

Elise was the university’s representative in the Dutch Music Art Design-network and the president of the university’s Women’s network. Earlier this year she became program manager of the No Switches Allowed track within the Intelligent Lighting Institute, which focuses on innovative interaction styles with light and lighting of the future.

She was a visiting scientist at the Synaesthetic Media Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, the Memoir project, University of Sheffield, UK, and currently at the Interactivation Studio, DAB, UTS. For more information, see: www.elisevandenhoven.com

Other talks  by Elise

Elise will also give the following talks:

Materializing Memories
Department of Information Systems Seminar Series
ICT Building Theatre 3, The University of Melbourne, Level 2, ICT Building, 111 Barry Street, Carlton.
11:15-12:30, Friday, 4th of November, 2011

Elise van den Hoven will talk about her design research into supporting everyday human memory through interactive systems. Her talk is entitled Materializing memories, which tries to convey the importance of the physical in combination with memory. The talk will cover three studies: 1- a digital photo browser using physical interaction (her PhD-project), 2- a study into time capsules for families, and 3- a design to facilitate communication about the past, between parents and teens.

Physical Interaction Design
IDEAS Lab, Department of Information Systems
The University of Melbourne, Level 4, ICT Building, 111 Barry Street, Carlton.
3:00-4:00pm. Friday, 4th of November, 2011

In this presentation, entitled Physical Interaction Design, Elise van den Hoven will focus on her design research into tangible and embodied interaction. She will present a selection of projects, including a study into supporting children learning sound concepts through embodied interaction, a recent study into designing for the periphery of the attention and the new field of tangible gesture interaction.

 

 

 

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Talk by Peter Wilson and Jonathan Duckworth

Date:: Tuesday 11 October
Time:: 12.30 – 1.30pm
Place:: Virtual Reality Lab, Bldg. 91, Ground Floor (NOTE CHANGE OF VENUE DUE TO LIVE DEMO)

Peter Wilson and Jonathan Duckworth will talk about their game for rehabilitation:

Re Spiel for Elements System

Patients with brain injury frequently exhibit impaired upper limb function. The Elements virtual reality system addressed this disability by using an intuitive desktop workspace that affords basic gestural control. The system design provides tactility, texture, and audio visual feedback to entice patients to explore their own movement capabilities in a directed and self directed fashion. Its effectiveness has been demonstrated in several studies.

http://www.zedbuffer.com/project%20elements%2001.htm

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Feedback lunch: Wouter and bicycle helmets for self-expression

We are having a feedback lunch: a brown bag lunch meeting where we as a group give feedback to each other in the early stage of a research project. Wouter will be hosting the next one (and providing free sandwiches!) on

Monday, 10 Oct 12-1 in the Exertion Games Lab

in order to get feedback from all of you on his current thinking on:

Augmenting bicycle helmets to allow cyclists more ways for self-expression to enhance the cycle experience through play elements (for example, the helmet starts to glow based on heart rate, or the helmet lights up in sync with other cyclists).


He is eager to hear your feedback, so if you can make it that would be great!
We are trying to make it very informal, have lunch at the same time, so hopefully it will be heaps fun!

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Talk by Wouter Walmink and Eberhard Graether

Wouter Walmink will talk about his company Studio Ludens and Eberhard Graether about the Marble Run, the in-browser game that won the Mozilla Game On Challenge.

Date: Tuesday 6th September

Time: 12.30
Venue: 14.11.37

Wouter Walmink (walmink.com) just joined the Exertion Games Lab
(exertiongameslab.org) at RMIT, coming from the Netherlands; he has
previously worked at CSIRO in Canberra. He is an award-winning
interaction designer who creates design tools that help you “make
beautiful things”. He helps designers to work together with their users
in creating customized products (without ever meeting in person) and
allowing the general public to experience the joy of creating
firsthand. Wouter’s talk will focus on 2 points:
1. What have I learnt from 5 years of designing for creative
experiences? (examples & findings)
2. How can you make better games / interfaces that use creativity for a
general public? (linking it to the field of gaming)

Eberhard Gräther is student of MultiMediaTechnology at Salzburg
University of Applied Sciences. He is a visiting researcher at RMIT’s Exertion Games Lab.
Eberhard will talk about his study and his projects including Marble
Run, the in-browser game that won the Mozilla Game On Challenge.

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Flora Salim speaks

Flora Salim from the Spatial Information Architecture Lab at RMIT will talk on Tuesday 30 Aug 2011 at 12.30 in 14.11.37. Talk abstract:

Coding, hacking, and prototyping are fun, as well as playing, interacting, and social gaming! Can we insert the “fun” from gaming experiences into collaborative design projects solving real-world problems? Dr. Flora Salim (http://florasalim.com), a Research Fellow at Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), RMIT University, is interested in enabling transdisciplinary design teams to work collaboratively to produce exciting outcomes. With background in Computer Science, she is interested in applying computational approaches, particularly distributed and mobile computing, data analysis, augmented reality, and tangible interactions to architecture and urban design problems. She initiated the development of UbiMash (http://ubimash.com), an open source software platform for designing between physical and digital, enabling data exchange between physical and digital models using  game consoles, microelectronics, sensor devices, social networks, and the Web.

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Hugh Davies

Hugh Davies will be in the lab from Monday onwards working on his PhD on the alternate reality game The Darkest Puzzle. Hugh has produced alternate games for the ABC and has extensive international experience in the games research arena from Europe as well. Welcome Hugh!

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Wouter Walmink joins the lab

Wouter Walmink is an amazing designer who has done fascinating exertion systems and games in both Australia (CSIRO) and in the Netherlands, where he co-founded Studio Ludens that attracted prestigious clients such as Philips and TUE. He will be joining the Exertion Games Lab on Monday, working on a distributed exertion game for teenagers. Welcome Wouter!

 

A word from Wouter

Hi there!

I am super-excited to be part of the Exertion Games Lab as of today (29-8-2011). A quick introduction: I’m an interaction designer with a passion for physical interaction. I love empowering people and helping them discover their own talents. In the past 5 years I have been running my own company studio:ludens with Alexander Rulkens, developing online design tools and products in the emerging market of mass-customization. Last year we created an interactive installation called ‘Flosculus’ with Philips and Little Mountain (watch the video).

Among others we developed a pattern-making tool called Repper. An early online version of this tool generated over 100.000 patterns made by people all over the world, browsable at ColourPatterns.com. Have a go at it yourself with the latest version in the online demo.

In the next months my aim is to develop an exertion game that will knock your socks off. I’ll try and merge new interaction styles into exercise gameplay, mingle new themes with old-school fun and make magic happen.

This project is all about making something amazing —> more brains involved = more amazingness. So if you’re in for a brainstorm session, want to share your wisdom with me or join in, contact me at wouter@walmink.com.

See you at the Exertion Games Lab!

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Brainstorming ideas for peace.facebook

Thanks for contributing to today’s brainstorming session for the peace.facebook initiative, it was great fun!
Attached is a picture of the board where we posted all ideas. They will now be summarized and put forward to the peace.facebook initiative and then we’ll turn them into some great student projects.
Thanks again for participating, very inspiring!
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User Experience in Games

In the User Experience in Games lecture organized by the Exertion Games Lab, students were challenged to redesign the hand-dryer experience in a playful way. They came up with some amazing ideas on how to turn a task-focused activity (how can we dry hands faster and more effectively?) into an engaging play experience, see the pictures.




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