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Stefan Greuter

RMIT University, Media & Communication, Faculty Member

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Associate Professor Stefan Greuter is the Foundation Director of the Centre for Game Design Research (CGDR) in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University.

Previous positions include Associate Dean (Games and Animation), Discipline Head (Games and Animation) and Program Director of the Games program in the School of Media and Communication.

Stefan Greuter’s research is interested in solving existing problems using innovative game design experiences that bring together research from multiple disciplines including Business, Construction, Occupational Health and Safety, Art, Design and Information Technology. Stefan has a track record of working with experts from other fields and specialises in solutions involving the latest game technology.

Stefan was the chief investigator and producer of the award winning iPad game ‘Trouble Tower’ that teaches construction students about hazard recognition on Australian construction sites. The game, has been downloaded more than 20,000 times worldwide and is now part of the Occupational Health and Safety curriculum at RMIT and other Health and Safety Training providers in Australia. Trouble Tower was selected as a finalist for the prestigious Spark App Design Award in 2013 and received an Occupational Health and Safety Award for the most Innovative OH&S Intervention.

Stefan’s research is published in book chapters, journals articles, and his creative work has been showcased at a number of prestigious Games and Design conferences. He has been recognised with best paper awards at conferences of the highest calibre. He has over ten years of teaching experience and is currently coordinating a course about Experimental Game Design in the Bachelor of Design (Games) program. He supervises several PhD candidates whose work seeks to solve existing problems through the use of gaming technology.

Stefan is a program a regular committee member for CHI, CHI Play, ICEC, IE and served as the Conference Chair for Interactive Entertainment conference (2013) and co-chair at the Animation Studies Conferences (2012). Stefan is also an editor of the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations (IJGCMS).

He holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Visual Communication and his postgraduate studies were supported by two prestigious scholarships from the German Academic Exchange program (DAAD) and the Australian International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (IPRS).

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Concordia University (Canada)

Vrije Universiteit Brussel

School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Duke University

Kansas State University

Ramesh Chander Sharma

Ambedkar University Delhi

Stefano R L Campana

University of Siena / Università di Siena

Dominic Arsenault

Université de Montréal

S. Sadi SEFEROGLU

Hacettepe University

Lennart E Nacke

University of Waterloo

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Papers by Stefan Greuter

A Design Framework for Ingestible Play

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Apr 1, 2023

Social Adventure

International Journal of Gaming and Computer-mediated Simulations, Jul 13, 2022

Social environments can be challenging for people with intellectual disability. These challenges ... more Social environments can be challenging for people with intellectual disability. These challenges impact a person’s social inclusion and participation in their communities. Social skills development requires training and practice, but training is often time-limited, costly, and hard to access. However, games on smart speakers provide interesting opportunities to improve training access, motivate self-directed learning, and focus on speech. The authors developed an interactive narrative-based social skills training game for smart-speakers. The game facilitates exploration of the social consequences of making various choices in different social situations and uses natural language inputs. Having tested the game with ten adults with intellectual disability, the authors offer designers insights into participant engagement and the game’s audio-only, natural language interface usability. The authors also propose four design considerations to help designers design applications that help people with intellectual disability participate in social activities.

Towards understanding the design of bodily integration

International journal of human-computer studies, Aug 1, 2021

, as important metrics of user experience. Namely, we evoke the concepts of bodily ownership and ... more , as important metrics of user experience. Namely, we evoke the concepts of bodily ownership and bodily agency, to examine the experience of human-machine integration systems, as it has been previously highlighted that our body and how much agency we have over it informs almost any experience (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009; Braun et al., 2018).

Ingestible sensors are digital devices that can measure the user's body data after being swallowe... more Ingestible sensors are digital devices that can measure the user's body data after being swallowed and hence have great potential in medical use. Unfortunately, few studies have considered the playful experiences afforded by ingestible sensors. We believe that the use of localised sensations, such as those created by heat, to represent the data measured by ingestible sensors offers opportunities to support experiencing the body as play. To explore this opportunity, we introduce a two-player system called HeatCraft that uses an ingestible sensor to measure the users' body temperature and employs thermal stimuli to provide feedback. Similar to open-ended games, HeatCraft allows players to decide when and what to do in order to know more about their body, facilitating playful experiences of exploration and discovery. With this work, we aim to inspire game designers and HCI researchers to consider localised sensations when designing playful and engaging experiences around ingestible sensors. CCS Concepts •Human-centered computing → Interaction paradigms; •Applied computing → Computer games;

IE2013: IE2013 : proceedings of the 9th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment : matters of life and death

A Design Framework for Ingestible Play

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

Ingestible sensors have become smaller and more powerful and allow us to envisage new human-compu... more Ingestible sensors have become smaller and more powerful and allow us to envisage new human-computer interactions and bodily play experiences inside our bodies. Users can swallow ingestible sensors, which facilitate interior body sensing functions that provide data on which play experiences can be built. We call bodily play that uses ingestible sensors as play technologies “ingestible play”, and we have adopted a research-through-design (RtD) approach to investigate three prototypes. For each prototype, we conducted a field study to understand the player experiences. Based upon these results and practical design experiences, we have developed a design framework for ingestible play. We hope this work can guide the future design of ingestible play; inspire the design of play technologies inside the human body to expand the current bodily play design space; and ultimately extend our understanding of how to design for the human body by considering the bodily experience of one’s interior...

The immersive archive

International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media

An Evaluation of Virtual Reality Maintenance Training for Industrial Hydraulic Machines

2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)

Virtual reality applications for industrial training have widespread benefits for simulating vari... more Virtual reality applications for industrial training have widespread benefits for simulating various scenarios and conditions. We present an empirical evaluation of VR training approach using kinesthetics learning strategy in industrial maintenance training, specifically the hydraulic manufacturing industry. Through our collaboration with a leading industry partner, a remote multi-user training platform using head-mounted display was designed and implemented. We present the evaluation of the platform with two diverse cohorts of novice users and industry contractors, in comparison to traditional training using slides, photos, and videos. The results show that VR training is engaging and effective in boosting trainee’s confidence, especially for novice users. Our studies highlight the impact of virtual reality training on trainee experience, performance, and skills transfer, with reflections on the differences between novice and industry trainees.

Human–Computer Integration: Towards Integrating the Human Body with the Computational Machine

Foundations and Trends® in Human-Computer Interaction

Designing public VR installations

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Virtual Reality (VR) installations using head-mounted displays (HMD) are becoming increasingly po... more Virtual Reality (VR) installations using head-mounted displays (HMD) are becoming increasingly popular in public spaces. However, VR's immersive nature engages only the HMD wearer and excludes everyone else in the public space, and there is little design knowledge of how to engage those not wearing an HMD. To address this, we draw from our experiences of having designed seven public VR installations to present a design space around the dimensions of "agency" and "interest" with four user engagement frames to articulate twelve diferent user roles. To guide designers to support all roles and to transition users between those roles, we complement the design space with a set of design tactics for public VR installations. We hope that these combined contributions will help designers engage more people with VR installations so that ultimately more people beneft from what VR has to ofer. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Interaction design; Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms.

Exploring participant interaction with interpersonal touch musical interfaces

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

There is growing research on the benefits of interpersonal touch as part of our social lives. Int... more There is growing research on the benefits of interpersonal touch as part of our social lives. Interpersonal touch musical interfaces (IT-MIs) are devices that turn a participant's skin into a touch sensitive interface to control music. These devices could have a huge impact on normalizing interpersonal touch interactions as we emerge from restrictions brought on by COVID 19. There is little research that outlines the design of these devices or offers a framework for their implementation. This research hopes to encourage interpersonal touch by examining how participants interact with each other when wearing an ITMI device. It will do this by considering the experiences of a group of participants engaging with a novel bodyworn ITMI. This design framework will illuminate the effect of these devices and be useful to interaction designers and researchers who are examining new ways to encourage interpersonal touch in performance and public art contexts.

Extended Abstracts of the 2020 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, 2020

Virtual Reality (VR) games and applications require accurate spatial positioning of the head-moun... more Virtual Reality (VR) games and applications require accurate spatial positioning of the head-mounted display (HMD) within the virtual environment. Inside-out tracking technologies such as &#39;Oculus Insight&#39; derive the HMD position by tracking &#39;landmarks&#39; in the user&#39;s environment. Because these technologies face specific limitations in deriving the HMD position and rotation, players can experience noticeable spatial drift[1]. To develop a better understanding of these limitations and improve tracking accuracy, we tested &#39;Oculus Insight&#39; under several environmental and user conditions. We used Unreal Engine to develop a calibration program which measures the discrepancy between the HMD&#39;s real-world and its in-game positions, in order to calculate the relative spatial drift. We replicated this program in several environments, duration and distance travelled by a user. Preliminary findings suggest methods for improving spatial accuracy over time; most notably providing a white grid pattern against dark carpet, which improved tracking by a factor of 4.3. This study helps researchers and practitioners minimize spatial drift in VR optical tracking systems such as Oculus Insight.

AutoJam: Exploring Interactive Music Experiences in Stop-and-Go Traffic

Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 2017

AutoJam is an interactive music listening experience played on an inactive steering wheel of an a... more AutoJam is an interactive music listening experience played on an inactive steering wheel of an autonomous car. By designing AutoJam, our aim was to make in-car music interactive and align music creation with the progression of the traffic situation. Besides being a fun and creative activity for frustrating stop-and-go traffic, AutoJam helps to understand the building blocks of in-car performances. In order to explore the impact of AutoJam, we conducted an in-situ user study with 14 participants. From the findings, we constructed a map of experiential dimensions of AutoJam and found that player's experience, constitute itself through a continuous shifting between those dimensions. Reflecting on this process, we discuss four building blocks of in-car performances. Ultimately, this work aims to frame autonomous driving in difficult traffic as a creative and playful activity promoting situational awareness and musical expression.

AutoGym: An Exertion Game for Autonomous Driving

Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, 2017

In-car exercises are a promising way to keep the inactive driver of future autonomous cars in goo... more In-car exercises are a promising way to keep the inactive driver of future autonomous cars in good shape and alert of the situation around them. To explore how to implement exercises into the car context, we designed AutoGym, an in-car fitness program that translates frustrating traffic into a fun exertion game. To progress in the game, the players must anticipate changes to the traffic situation they are exposed to in the car and work-out against their prediction. In this paper, we present the conceptual design of AutoGym and report what we have learnt from an explorative user study with 28 participants. Furthermore, from the design process and the evaluation, we derived three strategies for implementing exertion games. We found that these strategies helped to conceptualize exertion games as a playful embodiment of the dynamics of driving and as such, can positively influence the experience of control, orientation and situational awareness i.e. experiential factors that can be cruc...

Narrative Improvisation: Simulating Game Master Choices

Interactive Storytelling, 2018

Any computer game with a strong story has difficulty balancing the tension between narrative and ... more Any computer game with a strong story has difficulty balancing the tension between narrative and agency. Strong narrative usually results in weak agency, and strong agency can weaken narrative structure. Narrative improvisation, adapting the story based on player reactions, is a difficult task for a game designer. Narrative improvisation, however, is regularly practised by the human game masters (GMs) of tabletop roleplaying games. As the first stage of building a game master agent (GMA), this paper examines the moment in which GMs decide if and how to alter their storyline due to player action. GMs were interviewed to discover their reactions when players make unexpected choices. Ten themes emerged from analysis of the interviews, we examined these themes to determine the thought processes that took place in the GMs’ minds, and we represented the processes as flow charts. These decision charts are a first step in the construction of a GMA that could assist in the development of more responsive interactive narrative in computer games.

Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference, 2020

Amblyopia is a childhood condition in which best-corrected visual acuity in one eye is poorer tha... more Amblyopia is a childhood condition in which best-corrected visual acuity in one eye is poorer than the other. Current treatments involve forcing the brain to privilege the affected eye, usually by blocking vision through the better one. Few studies have considered the binocular affordances provided by virtual reality (VR) headsets and the engaging qualities of electronic games as a treatment. To explore these opportunities, we introduce AmblyopiaVR. The system calibrates a user's VR view separately for each eye and engages them in play experiences. The objective is to encourage prolonged exposure to the treatment and improve vision in the weak eye. Specific aspects of the VR image can be altered in real-time, enabling researchers to investigate driving factors in amblyopia treatment. This paper presents the conceptualization and design of the system and its implementation, prototype-game ideas, and future user testing plans.

Always on: understanding the intrinsic motivations for playing games on smartphones and the effect of user characteristics

This study examines the intrinsic motivations that drive the enjoyment of smartphone games and th... more This study examines the intrinsic motivations that drive the enjoyment of smartphone games and the influence of the characteristics of age, gender and playfulness on such motivations. Using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) from the discipline of psychology as a basis, a sample of 340 smartphone gamers was surveyed and the results were analyzed using a multiple linear regression approach. The consequent model was then tested in relation to two specific games to further validate the approach and provide a model that is relevant to individual games. This study thus provides a clearer idea of the nature of play as it develops in the era of the smartphone game as well as adding another layer to our understanding of intrinsic motivation due to the fact that smartphone games can be accessed as necessary for need satisfaction, to experience flow, to gain a sense of escapism and ultimately to allow a player to experience a sense of enjoyment. Given that smartphones now constitute an essential...

Designing Mediated Nurturing Play with Dogs to Alleviate Workplace Stress

Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems, 2016

Workplace stress is an ongoing concern for individuals, employers and communities, calling for in... more Workplace stress is an ongoing concern for individuals, employers and communities, calling for innovative interventions. Benefits of play therapy, animal-assisted activities, and nurturing are well documented, yet workplaces restrictions often prevent novel solutions from being applied. To overcome these restrictions while taking advantage of recent research, we introduce a human-computer-animal interactive (HCAI) nurturing play system, minimising workplace disruption through alternative stress alleviation approaches. Our proposed system connects workers with remote rescued dogs in nurturing play interactions, while promoting dog wellbeing. Through NurturePlay, this paper invites further consideration of how interactive technology design may facilitate workplace stress alleviation through remote nurturing play with animals. We seek feedback of our proposed system through this work-in-progress before actual implementation.

Workshop on Entertainment in Serious Games and Entertaining Serious Purposes

A Design Framework for Ingestible Play

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, Apr 1, 2023

Social Adventure

International Journal of Gaming and Computer-mediated Simulations, Jul 13, 2022

Social environments can be challenging for people with intellectual disability. These challenges ... more Social environments can be challenging for people with intellectual disability. These challenges impact a person’s social inclusion and participation in their communities. Social skills development requires training and practice, but training is often time-limited, costly, and hard to access. However, games on smart speakers provide interesting opportunities to improve training access, motivate self-directed learning, and focus on speech. The authors developed an interactive narrative-based social skills training game for smart-speakers. The game facilitates exploration of the social consequences of making various choices in different social situations and uses natural language inputs. Having tested the game with ten adults with intellectual disability, the authors offer designers insights into participant engagement and the game’s audio-only, natural language interface usability. The authors also propose four design considerations to help designers design applications that help people with intellectual disability participate in social activities.

Towards understanding the design of bodily integration

International journal of human-computer studies, Aug 1, 2021

, as important metrics of user experience. Namely, we evoke the concepts of bodily ownership and ... more , as important metrics of user experience. Namely, we evoke the concepts of bodily ownership and bodily agency, to examine the experience of human-machine integration systems, as it has been previously highlighted that our body and how much agency we have over it informs almost any experience (Blanke & Metzinger, 2009; Braun et al., 2018).

Ingestible sensors are digital devices that can measure the user's body data after being swallowe... more Ingestible sensors are digital devices that can measure the user's body data after being swallowed and hence have great potential in medical use. Unfortunately, few studies have considered the playful experiences afforded by ingestible sensors. We believe that the use of localised sensations, such as those created by heat, to represent the data measured by ingestible sensors offers opportunities to support experiencing the body as play. To explore this opportunity, we introduce a two-player system called HeatCraft that uses an ingestible sensor to measure the users' body temperature and employs thermal stimuli to provide feedback. Similar to open-ended games, HeatCraft allows players to decide when and what to do in order to know more about their body, facilitating playful experiences of exploration and discovery. With this work, we aim to inspire game designers and HCI researchers to consider localised sensations when designing playful and engaging experiences around ingestible sensors. CCS Concepts •Human-centered computing → Interaction paradigms; •Applied computing → Computer games;

IE2013: IE2013 : proceedings of the 9th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment : matters of life and death

A Design Framework for Ingestible Play

ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction

Ingestible sensors have become smaller and more powerful and allow us to envisage new human-compu... more Ingestible sensors have become smaller and more powerful and allow us to envisage new human-computer interactions and bodily play experiences inside our bodies. Users can swallow ingestible sensors, which facilitate interior body sensing functions that provide data on which play experiences can be built. We call bodily play that uses ingestible sensors as play technologies “ingestible play”, and we have adopted a research-through-design (RtD) approach to investigate three prototypes. For each prototype, we conducted a field study to understand the player experiences. Based upon these results and practical design experiences, we have developed a design framework for ingestible play. We hope this work can guide the future design of ingestible play; inspire the design of play technologies inside the human body to expand the current bodily play design space; and ultimately extend our understanding of how to design for the human body by considering the bodily experience of one’s interior...

The immersive archive

International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media

An Evaluation of Virtual Reality Maintenance Training for Industrial Hydraulic Machines

2022 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)

Virtual reality applications for industrial training have widespread benefits for simulating vari... more Virtual reality applications for industrial training have widespread benefits for simulating various scenarios and conditions. We present an empirical evaluation of VR training approach using kinesthetics learning strategy in industrial maintenance training, specifically the hydraulic manufacturing industry. Through our collaboration with a leading industry partner, a remote multi-user training platform using head-mounted display was designed and implemented. We present the evaluation of the platform with two diverse cohorts of novice users and industry contractors, in comparison to traditional training using slides, photos, and videos. The results show that VR training is engaging and effective in boosting trainee’s confidence, especially for novice users. Our studies highlight the impact of virtual reality training on trainee experience, performance, and skills transfer, with reflections on the differences between novice and industry trainees.

Human–Computer Integration: Towards Integrating the Human Body with the Computational Machine

Foundations and Trends® in Human-Computer Interaction

Designing public VR installations

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

Virtual Reality (VR) installations using head-mounted displays (HMD) are becoming increasingly po... more Virtual Reality (VR) installations using head-mounted displays (HMD) are becoming increasingly popular in public spaces. However, VR's immersive nature engages only the HMD wearer and excludes everyone else in the public space, and there is little design knowledge of how to engage those not wearing an HMD. To address this, we draw from our experiences of having designed seven public VR installations to present a design space around the dimensions of "agency" and "interest" with four user engagement frames to articulate twelve diferent user roles. To guide designers to support all roles and to transition users between those roles, we complement the design space with a set of design tactics for public VR installations. We hope that these combined contributions will help designers engage more people with VR installations so that ultimately more people beneft from what VR has to ofer. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Interaction design; Interaction design theory, concepts and paradigms.

Exploring participant interaction with interpersonal touch musical interfaces

Designing Interactive Systems Conference

There is growing research on the benefits of interpersonal touch as part of our social lives. Int... more There is growing research on the benefits of interpersonal touch as part of our social lives. Interpersonal touch musical interfaces (IT-MIs) are devices that turn a participant's skin into a touch sensitive interface to control music. These devices could have a huge impact on normalizing interpersonal touch interactions as we emerge from restrictions brought on by COVID 19. There is little research that outlines the design of these devices or offers a framework for their implementation. This research hopes to encourage interpersonal touch by examining how participants interact with each other when wearing an ITMI device. It will do this by considering the experiences of a group of participants engaging with a novel bodyworn ITMI. This design framework will illuminate the effect of these devices and be useful to interaction designers and researchers who are examining new ways to encourage interpersonal touch in performance and public art contexts.

Extended Abstracts of the 2020 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, 2020

Virtual Reality (VR) games and applications require accurate spatial positioning of the head-moun... more Virtual Reality (VR) games and applications require accurate spatial positioning of the head-mounted display (HMD) within the virtual environment. Inside-out tracking technologies such as &#39;Oculus Insight&#39; derive the HMD position by tracking &#39;landmarks&#39; in the user&#39;s environment. Because these technologies face specific limitations in deriving the HMD position and rotation, players can experience noticeable spatial drift[1]. To develop a better understanding of these limitations and improve tracking accuracy, we tested &#39;Oculus Insight&#39; under several environmental and user conditions. We used Unreal Engine to develop a calibration program which measures the discrepancy between the HMD&#39;s real-world and its in-game positions, in order to calculate the relative spatial drift. We replicated this program in several environments, duration and distance travelled by a user. Preliminary findings suggest methods for improving spatial accuracy over time; most notably providing a white grid pattern against dark carpet, which improved tracking by a factor of 4.3. This study helps researchers and practitioners minimize spatial drift in VR optical tracking systems such as Oculus Insight.

AutoJam: Exploring Interactive Music Experiences in Stop-and-Go Traffic

Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems, 2017

AutoJam is an interactive music listening experience played on an inactive steering wheel of an a... more AutoJam is an interactive music listening experience played on an inactive steering wheel of an autonomous car. By designing AutoJam, our aim was to make in-car music interactive and align music creation with the progression of the traffic situation. Besides being a fun and creative activity for frustrating stop-and-go traffic, AutoJam helps to understand the building blocks of in-car performances. In order to explore the impact of AutoJam, we conducted an in-situ user study with 14 participants. From the findings, we constructed a map of experiential dimensions of AutoJam and found that player's experience, constitute itself through a continuous shifting between those dimensions. Reflecting on this process, we discuss four building blocks of in-car performances. Ultimately, this work aims to frame autonomous driving in difficult traffic as a creative and playful activity promoting situational awareness and musical expression.

AutoGym: An Exertion Game for Autonomous Driving

Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play, 2017

In-car exercises are a promising way to keep the inactive driver of future autonomous cars in goo... more In-car exercises are a promising way to keep the inactive driver of future autonomous cars in good shape and alert of the situation around them. To explore how to implement exercises into the car context, we designed AutoGym, an in-car fitness program that translates frustrating traffic into a fun exertion game. To progress in the game, the players must anticipate changes to the traffic situation they are exposed to in the car and work-out against their prediction. In this paper, we present the conceptual design of AutoGym and report what we have learnt from an explorative user study with 28 participants. Furthermore, from the design process and the evaluation, we derived three strategies for implementing exertion games. We found that these strategies helped to conceptualize exertion games as a playful embodiment of the dynamics of driving and as such, can positively influence the experience of control, orientation and situational awareness i.e. experiential factors that can be cruc...

Narrative Improvisation: Simulating Game Master Choices

Interactive Storytelling, 2018

Any computer game with a strong story has difficulty balancing the tension between narrative and ... more Any computer game with a strong story has difficulty balancing the tension between narrative and agency. Strong narrative usually results in weak agency, and strong agency can weaken narrative structure. Narrative improvisation, adapting the story based on player reactions, is a difficult task for a game designer. Narrative improvisation, however, is regularly practised by the human game masters (GMs) of tabletop roleplaying games. As the first stage of building a game master agent (GMA), this paper examines the moment in which GMs decide if and how to alter their storyline due to player action. GMs were interviewed to discover their reactions when players make unexpected choices. Ten themes emerged from analysis of the interviews, we examined these themes to determine the thought processes that took place in the GMs’ minds, and we represented the processes as flow charts. These decision charts are a first step in the construction of a GMA that could assist in the development of more responsive interactive narrative in computer games.

Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference, 2020

Amblyopia is a childhood condition in which best-corrected visual acuity in one eye is poorer tha... more Amblyopia is a childhood condition in which best-corrected visual acuity in one eye is poorer than the other. Current treatments involve forcing the brain to privilege the affected eye, usually by blocking vision through the better one. Few studies have considered the binocular affordances provided by virtual reality (VR) headsets and the engaging qualities of electronic games as a treatment. To explore these opportunities, we introduce AmblyopiaVR. The system calibrates a user's VR view separately for each eye and engages them in play experiences. The objective is to encourage prolonged exposure to the treatment and improve vision in the weak eye. Specific aspects of the VR image can be altered in real-time, enabling researchers to investigate driving factors in amblyopia treatment. This paper presents the conceptualization and design of the system and its implementation, prototype-game ideas, and future user testing plans.

Always on: understanding the intrinsic motivations for playing games on smartphones and the effect of user characteristics

This study examines the intrinsic motivations that drive the enjoyment of smartphone games and th... more This study examines the intrinsic motivations that drive the enjoyment of smartphone games and the influence of the characteristics of age, gender and playfulness on such motivations. Using Self-Determination Theory (SDT) from the discipline of psychology as a basis, a sample of 340 smartphone gamers was surveyed and the results were analyzed using a multiple linear regression approach. The consequent model was then tested in relation to two specific games to further validate the approach and provide a model that is relevant to individual games. This study thus provides a clearer idea of the nature of play as it develops in the era of the smartphone game as well as adding another layer to our understanding of intrinsic motivation due to the fact that smartphone games can be accessed as necessary for need satisfaction, to experience flow, to gain a sense of escapism and ultimately to allow a player to experience a sense of enjoyment. Given that smartphones now constitute an essential...

Designing Mediated Nurturing Play with Dogs to Alleviate Workplace Stress

Proceedings of the 2016 ACM Conference Companion Publication on Designing Interactive Systems, 2016

Workplace stress is an ongoing concern for individuals, employers and communities, calling for in... more Workplace stress is an ongoing concern for individuals, employers and communities, calling for innovative interventions. Benefits of play therapy, animal-assisted activities, and nurturing are well documented, yet workplaces restrictions often prevent novel solutions from being applied. To overcome these restrictions while taking advantage of recent research, we introduce a human-computer-animal interactive (HCAI) nurturing play system, minimising workplace disruption through alternative stress alleviation approaches. Our proposed system connects workers with remote rescued dogs in nurturing play interactions, while promoting dog wellbeing. Through NurturePlay, this paper invites further consideration of how interactive technology design may facilitate workplace stress alleviation through remote nurturing play with animals. We seek feedback of our proposed system through this work-in-progress before actual implementation.

Workshop on Entertainment in Serious Games and Entertaining Serious Purposes