Special Session: Measuring Engagement: Affective and Social Cues in Interactive Art and Media

Date:   Wednesday, August 29
Time:   10:00-12:50
Location:  42

Organisers: Anton Nijholt, University of Twente, Human Media Interaction, PO Box 217, 7500 AE Enschede, the Netherlands and Alessandro Vinciarelli, University of Glasgow, Department of Computing Science, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland

Abstract:

In game or entertainment environments the ‘user’ may take part in events that require  bodily interaction with sensor-equipped environments. Embedded motion-capture  and gyroscopic devices capture movements. Thanks to Nintendo’s remote WII, motion- controlled games are now wide spread. Cameras, microphones, pressure sensors, proximity  sensors have been added. Thanks to Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect whole body interaction games  have become popular. Apart from entertainment, such sensor equipped and game oriented  environments can be designed to improve health conditions, sports performance, or  (therapeutic) physical rehabilitation. 

More and cheap sensors are becoming available, allowing a game to obtain more  information about a player, in particular his or her bodily and emotional conditions. In  addition, these sensors allow more input modalities for interaction with an environment.  There are many examples of advanced games where posture, gestures, body movements,  facial expressions and brain activity are among the input modalities that are used to  control a game. Control can be direct, but it can also be mediated (for example through a  balance board, a tangible or a wearable). Hence, observations of the face and body can be  used in different forms, depending on whether the user has the initiative to control the  interaction or whether the application takes the initiative to adapt itself to the user. 

In this special session ‘engagement’ is the keyword. We will focus on measuring  engagement in order to allow adaptation of a game or entertainment environment. That  may include the appearance of the physical and virtual game and game environment,  availability and quality of interaction modalities, feedback by actuators, game narrative,  and game strategy. Cameras, microphones, position and proximity sensors, and (neuro-)  physiological sensors allow us to collect behavioral information from one or more people  performing in the environment. Obviously, we can also collect information before and after  their performance, using interviews and questionnaires. In the presentations in this special  session the various ways engagement information can be collected and used are surveyed. 

Sponsors 
This session is sponsored by the European FP7 Network of Excellence (NoE) SSPNet on  Social Signal Processing.

Program:

Program
10:00   On Making Engagement Tangible
  Egon L. van den Broek 
  TNO, Delft, University of Twente, Enschede, Radboud University Medical Center 
  (UMC) Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

10:20   Measuring Fun and Enjoyment of Children in a Museum:Evaluating the Smileyometer
  F. van der Sluis, E.M.A.G. van Dijk, and L.M. Perloy 
  University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.

10:40  Coffee break

11:10  Making Ambient Spaces into Playgrounds
  Dennis Reidsma, Daniel Tetteroo, and Anton Nijholt
  University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands.

11:30   Building Corpora of Bodily Expressions of Affect
  Marco Pasch, and Monica Landoni
  University of Lugano, Lugano, Switzerland.

11:50   Video-Based Multi-person Human Motion Capturing
  Nico van der Aa (1), Lucas Noldus (1), and Remco Veltkamp (2) 
  1 Noldus Information Technology, Wageningen, The Netherlands. 
  2 Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands.

12:10  What can Body Movement tell us about Players’ Engagement?
  N. Bianchi-Berthouze
  University College London, London, United Kingdom.

12:50  End of session