Cognition & Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games

!Holiday post! (via), Constance Steinkuehler has published her phd dissertation entitled Cognition & Learning in Massively Multiplayer Online Games: A Critical Approach. I just skimmed through the document bu I am looking forward to read it more carefully. Here is how she describes her research:

My research investigates the forms of learning, thinking, and socially interacting that MMOGs recruit from those who play. My dissertation (currently in progress) is an online cognitive ethnography of MMOGs that characterizes the emergent culture of MMOGaming and how participation is constituted through language and practice both within the game (e.g., virtual social interaction & joint activity) and beyond (e.g., the creation of fan fiction & websites). What does it mean to be literate in this social space? How does one become a member of this community? And what import does participation have for the (on- and off-screen) identities of its members?

Why do I blog this? I an really interested in hearing more about research in MMORPG and how it relates to socio-cognitive issues.

Technorati Tags: game, hci, cognition, MMORPG

Current state of P&V

On my way to San Diego…

Pasta and Vinegar Summer Break

Yes it’s time for a break, I’ll be out of the office during 3 weeks and a half, in the US, on the West coast mostly. However I will certainly blog some spread posts during the HCI International conference or on certain occasion.

Empty Paris Pictures

Stunning project by Nicolas Moulins: Vider Paris (Empty Paris):

“I worked on Vider Paris in a very rational way, as if I was part of a public engineering firm. I removed all traces of life, I dismantled the urban furniture and kept the architecture. It is a fiction without narration. I do not tell a story, I just present the facts. These images allow an open fiction, creating a powerful projection”.
Nicolas Moulin

Why do I blog this? I find this pictures impressive, it reflects a very strange atmosphere.

Technorati Tags: architecture, place

A crop circle containing a space invader

(via) Nice project found here, a circle containing a ‘retro space invader’ of standing crop.

Corporate use of RSS

I thought the Red Herring blogs were dead but it’s not the case. They have a pretty good piece about how RSS goes corporate. It’s mostly about hy information overload and spam leads enterprises to use RSS. Some excerpts here:

Until the last year, RSS was nearly impenetrable for all but the earliest of adopters, due to the complexity of reader setup, the narrow assortment of available feeds, and disputes over standards. (…) However, MSN, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, Google, Amazon, and AOL are integrating RSS into their portals, and all major browsers will have an aggregator embedded when Microsoft comes out with the new version of Internet Explorer. Various estimates put the number of active feeds at slightly over 5 million. (…) ING Chairman Michel Tilmant wanted to send a message to 115,000 employees without getting blocked by spam filters. The treasury department wanted instantaneous updates to worldwide company phone directories. The corporate leadership wanted to get outside information into its portal, but wanted to control the available channels and feeds. KnowNow CEO Michael Terner says RSS is the solution.

Why do i blog this? following the evolution of RSS is interesting, and I am pleased to see that this good technology is more and more present.

Technorati Tags: rss, syndication, web

Groundscrapers and Subscrapers

Ken Yeang has made his reputation building the bio-climatically considered skyscraper; more recently he has been discovering the advantages for building horizontally. As the world wakes up to this latest ecological progression Yeang is leading the way. In contrast to the discussions and publications elsewhere on the high-rise work of Ken Yeang, Groundscrapers examines his low-rise, medium-rise and master-planning work, and sets these in context of the work that is being created in the rest of the world. Illustrated thoughout in colour and black and white, it includes many schemes that demonstrate this way of building, as well as a subterranean project – an underground ‘skyscraper’.

Groundscrapers and Subscrapers are the antithesis of the environmentally-responsive Skyscrapers that are designed by Ken Yeang. These are eco-medium-rise buidlings, the roof-vegetated underground buildings and the landscape-driven materplans produced by his firms Hamzah & Yeang.

Why do I blog this? I really like these eco-friendly buildings.
Connected pasta: I already put stuff about vertical farming here and here (pif farm in a skyscraper)

Technorati Tags: architecture, ecobuilding, place, puppy, skyscraper, subscraper

Sony Revolution video

For people unaware of it, there is now this strikingly stunning video of the sony revolution. Damned good interaction based on the use of tiles.

Technorati Tags: hci, interface, tangible interaction

DoCoMo’s ways to increase its revenues = :(

In last week issue of Business Week, there was an interesting interview of NTT DoCoMo’s CEO Masao Nakamura. The interview reflects the troubles they have to get DoCoMo sales back on track and how to get revenues growing again:

Q: Those measures might stabilize the situation, but how do you get
revenues growing again?
A: We have to grow the traffic volume — not voice, but data traffic. If you look at the overall customer base, 80% of our customers are either not using data service at all or only slightly for mail transmission only. Just increasing the usage of those customers by 100 yen a month could provide a huge boost to our revenue.

One possibility is pushing information out to customers in order to get them to use data more frequently. The second booster would be visual communication service such as video phones and live video streaming.

Q: What are you doing to develop that?
A: We are having a hard time convincing customers to take up video-phone conversations. Grandparents might want to talk to their grandchildren over the video phone, but that’s about it. Another factor is that until now, the number of customers owning a videophone-compatible handset was limited. So they weren’t able to find people to call. But I think we can resolve this issue by increasing the number of subscribers.

Also, some women, for instance, don’t want to pick up a videophone call when they’re not wearing makeup — so the first connection will be established by voice. But when they’re ready, they will be able to switch over to videophone.

We also have another feature that enables an avatar to replace the caller. A cartoon character can be shown instead, and when you’re ready, you can switch over to your own face. But videophone service is not really rooted in the culture yet, so we have to try to further promote this service.

It seems that their solutions to increase their revenues are rather weak. I am not definitely not a firm believer in videophones, and this avatar thing is really a poor innovation. Besides, I hate this idea of “80% of our customers are either not using data service” so let’s push them to send lots of crap to use the bandwidth. At Telecom 2003 in Geneva, I was a bit shocked by the way they want the phone to be a remote control from everything (home lights, tv…) obliging users to pay (using mobile network) to control standard features (switching my tv) at home. I understand that it’s how the market behaves but c’mon it really sucks.

On a different note, I would really know more about this stance: “some women, for instance, don’t want to pick up a videophone call when they’re not wearing makeup”, what is this?

The other part of the interview are also interesting; for instance there is a discussion about whether DoCoMo’s move to 3G might have been to quick. The other markets they are targeting are also boring, déjà vu and not promising:

We might see some content in providing education. In Japan, there
are courses that people go after school in order to prepare for college entrance examinations, and the quiz could be offered on cellphones so that the children can punch in the answers and save time on their studies. [vow what a statement!!!!] Online auctions are becoming available. There are many other kinds of content that have been offered only on PCs, but those can be modified to be offered on cellphones.

The last claim is useless, maybe does he mean that only our imagination is the limit to what we can envision as applications? Somehow I feel that they guy has a very strange discourse, absolutely not innovative and even less user-centered. Is there really not anything more interesting to offer to the users? Absolutely not mention of games, maps or some application related to a concrete user need. I don’t get it and it seems that competitors (for instance KDDI who funded the first version the mobile game Mogi Mogi was doing better).

Why do I blog this? carriers’ strategy is interesting since they should innovate to keep their customers/users happy but in this case innovation is pretty low. Maybe the best innovation they mention is “a less-expensive model that has
fewer features than the highest-end models” because it can fit to real users’ demands and needs Well I am not really correct here, they do have interesting innovation like this WiFi/cell-phone combination.

Technorati Tags: docomo, mobile phone, puppy, videophone

Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction (Tai-Chi)

Today I had lunch with Alain Guisan/Crevoisier, artistic director of art company b-polar and Myiuki Warabiushi his girlfriend, a japanese dancer. What he does in his art company seems really appealing, I will certainly visit their workspace.

Besides, Alain is working on a European project: Tangible Acoustic Interfaces for Computer-Human Interaction (Tai-Chi):

This project explores how physical objects, augmented surfaces and spaces can be transformed into tangible-acoustic embodiments of natural seamless unrestricted interfaces. The ultimate goal is to design Tangible Acoustic Interfaces (TAI) that employ physical objects and space as media to bridge the gap between the virtual and physical worlds and to make information accessible through large size touchable objects as well as through ambient media.

The method that will be developed is based on the principle that interacting with a physical object modifies its surface acoustic patterns, due for instance to the generation of acoustic vibrations (passive method) or the absorption of acoustic energy (active method) at the points of contact. By visualising and characterising such acoustic patterns, it will be possible to transform almost anything (for example, a wall, window, table top or arbitrary 3D object) into an interactive interface (a giant flat or 3D touch screen), opening up new modes of computer-user interaction for responsive environments. Because of their numerous advantages over other methods, including the spatial freedom they provide to the user, the robustness with which they can be constructed and the ease of accommodating multiple users simultaneously, acoustics-based interfaces will become a major sensing paradigm in the future, implying enormous potential for the whole computer and information industry.

Why do I blog this? I still have to see what emerged from this tangible interaction projects, it seems very compelling. On a different note, we exchanged interesting ideas with Alain about a potential non-for profit research lab (about user experience and interactive stuff), which is a recurrent idea lately with some folks around Geneva

Technorati Tags: alain guisan, puppy, tangible interaction