Lynne Hall | University of Sunderland (original) (raw)
Papers by Lynne Hall
International Journal of Doctoral Studies
Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restricti... more Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restrictions and changed context of COVID-19. Using connectivism as a theoretical framework, it explores the ways in which their patterns of study were recalibrated in light of the restrictions caused by the pandemic. Specifically, this study aims to: explore the experience of the professional doctorate student during the pandemic; and demonstrate the ways in which networks are recalibrated and adapt to changing circumstances. Background: In 2020, in response to COVID-19 many countries, including the UK, went into lockdown resulting in most doctoral candidates being confined to their homes and restricted to online contact with peers and supervisors. Part-time students have a finely balanced pattern of work which was required to be recalibrated and refocused which required considerable adaptation on the part of the candidates. Methodology: A qualitative methodology was used comprising four focus g...
adaptive agents and multi-agents systems, May 9, 2016
We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a ... more We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutor in terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal and the perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. The domain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helping learners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise that tests their map reading skills. The contribution described in this paper is the discovery that incorporating 'memory' through utterances that recall events from previous interactions significantly increases the learner's ability to perform a pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memory was perceived as less likeable and the instructions given as harder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory. In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy. This work has a large potential influence in the field of interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly add in human-like features, such as, memory that improve task performance without considering the potential detrimental effects to the perceived empathy and likeability.
We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a ... more We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutor in terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal and the perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. The domain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helping learners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise that tests their map reading skills. The contribution described in this paper is the discovery that incorporating ‘memory’ through utterances that recall events from previous interactions significantly increases the learner’s ability to perform a pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memory was perceived as less likeable and the instructions given as harder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory. In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy. This work has a large potential influence in the field of interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly add in human-like features, such as, memory that impro...
With the dominant trope of the computer as adversary rather than enabler, reinforcement learning ... more With the dominant trope of the computer as adversary rather than enabler, reinforcement learning for games has mainly focused on the ability of agents to compete and win. Although cooperation is a product of learning, of understanding the player's requirements and applying agents' competences to fulfil them, there has been little investigation of reinforcement learning for cooperation in games. Reinforcement learning results in the agent adapting and changing, however, there are concerns that such adaptivity could alienate users if their cooperative agent outperforms them. To explore this, the paper outlines the development and training of cooperative agents reporting users' positive response to adaptive cooperation in games.
Digital Creativity, 2018
This paper discusses a virtual reality experience for a contemporary sculpture park, Jupiter Artl... more This paper discusses a virtual reality experience for a contemporary sculpture park, Jupiter Artland, developed in Minecraft targeting 9-11-year-old children. Issues of fidelity, realism and authenticity are considered, examining the use of Minecraft to create visual representations loosely coupled with reality that generate affective responses. We discuss the build of our virtual sculpture park outlining our approach to creating a facsimile of the sculpture park through adopting practices from the Minecraft community and refining and improving the artworks and experience informed by a class of 9-10 year old children. Using the real and virtual sculpture parks we explore the impact of engaging with the real before the virtual Jupiter Artland and vice versa, with the results from a three class study outlined in this paper.
Digital technology, the Internet and mobile communication have made picture taking and sharing ub... more Digital technology, the Internet and mobile communication have made picture taking and sharing ubiquitous. The photograph with its long track record as a representational artefact now portrays individuals in ever broader contexts. The once distinctive practice of the snapshot aesthetic in capturing the banal and everyday has become culturally pervasive and children are key creators, producers and sharers of digital photographs. Designers of innovative digital media for children and young people face real problems in establishing requirements. Early experiments using children's photographs to inspire design and game evaluation methods led to tangible improvements in the user experience. To date however, the benefits of a robust discourse on the vernacular photograph in this context have come secondary to the pragmatics of design. This paper will explore the role of the photograph as a cultural arbitrator in the design of innovative software for personal and social education. It will examine the construct of the photographic index and its changing value in dialogue associated with digital images; will consider how this inherently ambiguous dimension of human experience can be investigated to better appreciate children's affective and cognitive responses to photographs in design contexts and will discuss the benefits and challenges of harnessing the photograph as a cultural arbitrator.
Electronic Workshops in Computing, 2007
This paper reports on a case study of a participatory technique that focuses on gathering context... more This paper reports on a case study of a participatory technique that focuses on gathering contextual information from users to assist the analysis and design process. It presents a participatory methodology based upon a photo-elicitation approach combined with Lomo photography practices and group-centric analysis aimed at children and teenagers in order to draw together design requirements specifically for them. The paper discusses the use of this approach for designing a multimedia learning application on water safety aimed at 11-13 year olds, with results highlighting the benefits of this approach for creating appropriate designs.
HCI 2018, 2018
This paper discusses a mixed reality that intertwines two parallel spaces, a real and a virtual c... more This paper discusses a mixed reality that intertwines two parallel spaces, a real and a virtual contemporary sculpture park. With the goal to create a game that motivated children to explore the park and engage with the artworks, we engaged with children as informants. We developed a cast of characters based on the children's input that lived in the sculpture park. Using the characters as inspiration we created a three-act narrative, with the canonical trajectory provided as a sequential clues treasure hunt. The clues are integrated into character dialogue, with traversal and transitions reinforced through the narrative. Although the narrative and game were designed for a collaborative, multiuser , multi-device experience, the characters, narrative and experience were rapidly repurposed for an individual game on a mobile phone. This re-purposing focused on the transitions, using dramatic narrative to reinforce and mask reality change. Our results are positive, children enjoyed the mixed reality experiences and are keen to engage in different realities. Re-purposing assets, such as characters and narratives as well as virtual spaces is effective, enabling rapid development of similar, yet very different mixed reality experiences.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017
Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2016
This paper focuses on achieving optimal responses through supporting children's judgements, using... more This paper focuses on achieving optimal responses through supporting children's judgements, using Smiley Face Likert scales as a rating scale for quantitative questions in evaluations. It highlights the need to provide appropriate methods for children to communicate judgements, highlighting that the traditional Smiley Face Likert scale does not provide an appropriate method. The paper outlines a range of studies, identifying that to achieve differentiated data and full use of rating scales by children that faces with positive emotions should be used within Smiley Face Likert scales. The proposed rating method, the Five Degrees of Happiness Smiley Face Likert scale, was used in a largescale summative evaluation of a Serious Game resulting in variance within and between children, with all points of the scale used.
2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2016
In this video submission, we describe a scenario developed in the EMOTE project. The overall goal... more In this video submission, we describe a scenario developed in the EMOTE project. The overall goal of the EMOTE project is to develop an empathic robot tutor for 11-13 year old school students in an educational setting. The pedagogical domain here is to assist students in learning and testing their map-reading skills typically learned as part of the geography curriculum in schools. We show this scenario with a NAO robot interacting with the students whilst performing mapreading tasks on a touch-screen device in this video.
Through the Internet and mobile technologies teenagers immerse themselves in networks of social r... more Through the Internet and mobile technologies teenagers immerse themselves in networks of social relationships that often provide unhindered terrain for the cyberbully. Encouraging teenagers to verbalise about relationships with people they cannot see face to face is particularly problematic. Here, we used the generation of visual imagery during a role play activity with over 400 11 to 18 year olds to gain a greater understanding of cyberbullying. Teenagers were asked to carry out a web design activity about cyberbullying; this provided an appropriate context in which they could generate visual data and yielded 129 storyboards. Participants were in role as designers throughout and very open, fluid and productive in the task. Visual analysis highlighted teenagers's reliance on their understanding of physical bullying to portray the cyberbully and identified more concrete manifestations of the cyberbullying threat. The use of a drawing approach with teenagers proved highly productive and the value of tapping into teenagers sophisticated visual language to help them express with great clarity the things that they find difficult to talk about is discussed.
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children - IDC '12, 2012
Archive photographs are used widely in heritage education, but the photographic experience and ou... more Archive photographs are used widely in heritage education, but the photographic experience and our understanding of it, is poorer than it could be. This is primarily because the learning often fails to harness a photograph's tangible indexical link with the past, but also because the instability of photographic meaning requires that we assign explicit labels for historic purposes, without always being fully cognisant of the impact. Research has shown that manipulating defined realness does affect adults emotional and cognitive responses to photographs, but no similar studies have been undertaken to date with children. Pragmatics of recreating the experience of looking at actual archive photographs remains a significant barrier, but the uptake of small, mobile tablet devices offers new opportunities to investigate what we have described here as children's indexical encounter with photographs. In this study children were shown matched pairs of natural and staged archive images, across three viewing conditions, (i) as real archive photographs and as (ii) digitised images on tablet and (iii) large flat screen devices. Children's emotional responses to natural archive images was significantly stronger when these were viewed as real archive photographs, but cognitive responses to natural photographs were significantly greater when these were viewed on tablets. Results are discussed with reference to the indexical experience and how an understanding of photographic properties can help tailor better visual learning experiences for children both in a heritage education context and in other disciplines.
Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology - ACE '04, 2004
The growth of the mobile gaming market offers considerable potential for the deployment of engagi... more The growth of the mobile gaming market offers considerable potential for the deployment of engaging and compelling games constructed using AI components and techniques. This paper discusses a rule-based approach for constructing lightweight Game AI systems for deployment on mobile devices. The development environment and the mimosa programming language for constructing Game AI components are outlined. A prototype game of Texas Hold'em Poker implemented using this environment is described. Ideas for future work, including the development of games mentors for deployment on mobile devices are briefly presented.
Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 2004
An evaluation study using a trailer approach of a Virtual Learning Environment populated with ani... more An evaluation study using a trailer approach of a Virtual Learning Environment populated with animated characters focusing on physical bullying was carried out with three stakeholder groups, (children, teachers and experts) to examine their attitudes and empathic styles about the characters and storyline believability. Results from 127 children and 95 adults revealed that children expressed the most favourable views towards the characters and the highest levels of believability towards the bullying storyline. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of child-informant processes in leading the design of child-based systems and the use of animated cartoon characters alongside storyline narratives to incite engaging interactions.
Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems common ground - CHI '96, 1996
The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to imp... more The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to improve application usability and to encourage a focus on HCI issues are detailed. Several applications are described, identifying the success of the incorporation of HCI at Bane Sabadell. INTRODUCTION OF HCI TO BANC SABADELL Bane Sabadell is a medium sized Spanish bank, with 400 branches and 4000 employees. The inforrnatics division has 200 employees, who develop applications and provide user support. Programming is provided by external companies. Before 1990, there was a reliance on character based interfaces. In 1989, an application with a graphical interface, BOSS which provides transactional operations, was initiated. In its pre-introduction phase a human factors evaluation was performed. The resulting savings highlighted HCI potential and identified a need for HCI expertise. In 1994, an HCI specialist was employed fill-time. Since then, an HCI group, now consisting of 3 people, has evolved which provides support to Project Heads for usability issues, interface design and identification of user needs. BANC SABADELL NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS Bane Sabadell has a dual language policy, and applications are produced in Catalan and Spanish. In-house development permits the development of customised applications and to facilitate this we have purchased an interface design tool. @ Copyright on this material is held by the author(s) Application homogeneity is encouraged to reduce costs of training, development and maintenance, demanding HCI group effort in determining how varying user needs cam be supported with the same application. HCI AND APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Knowledge transfer has been facilitated through producing interface design guidelines, an important issue as there is little HCI information in Catalan (the informatics division working language). Interface standards have been produced for applications which use software such as MicroSotl Access. A BOSS interface generator permits rapid development whilst ensuring consistency to in-house standards. To ensure high quality graphical design and a consistent corporate image for our InterNet web, a Page Editor has been developed which has a defined set of graphical elements and interaction standards. Recent activities include the use of iterative design and rapid prototyping. This enables project costing to remain acceptable, whilst permitting savings due to usability problem discovery early in the lifecycle. Prototyping has facilitated communication with users, improving input of constructive criticism and reducing misunderstandings. Channels for user ideas and improvements are provided through an “Initiative Competition. ” Suggestions vary from simple improvements to task structures up to ideas for full scale projects. Each suggestion is evaluated for improvement in productivity, quality (for clients and users) and costbenefits. Users are asked to rank applications monthly, helping to identify unsuccessfid applications which may need usability testing and modification. The HCI group is extending the project lifecycle to include issues such as usability goal setting, user testing
Proceeding of the 2004 conference on Interaction design and children building a community - IDC '04, 2004
This poster considers the use of storyboards, in a classroom setting with children in the 8-12 ag... more This poster considers the use of storyboards, in a classroom setting with children in the 8-12 age group. The storyboarding method allowed children to both generate and evaluate scenarios for a virtual world populated by synthetic characters for exploring bullying issues. This approach has assisted children in the process of visualising agent design and verbalising opinions. It has resulted in design implications that have emerged from enabling children to have a voice in the technology process.
The Florida AI Research Society Conference, 1998
Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and... more Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and Infi~rnlation Systems. It is a complex task which is not currently well provided with tool based support. This paper describes extensions to a learning environment for data modelling which is based on a text based virtual reality panldigm. This learning environment has been enhanced by the
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2009
International Journal of Doctoral Studies
Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restricti... more Aim/Purpose: This paper explores how professional doctorate candidates responded to the restrictions and changed context of COVID-19. Using connectivism as a theoretical framework, it explores the ways in which their patterns of study were recalibrated in light of the restrictions caused by the pandemic. Specifically, this study aims to: explore the experience of the professional doctorate student during the pandemic; and demonstrate the ways in which networks are recalibrated and adapt to changing circumstances. Background: In 2020, in response to COVID-19 many countries, including the UK, went into lockdown resulting in most doctoral candidates being confined to their homes and restricted to online contact with peers and supervisors. Part-time students have a finely balanced pattern of work which was required to be recalibrated and refocused which required considerable adaptation on the part of the candidates. Methodology: A qualitative methodology was used comprising four focus g...
adaptive agents and multi-agents systems, May 9, 2016
We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a ... more We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutor in terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal and the perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. The domain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helping learners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise that tests their map reading skills. The contribution described in this paper is the discovery that incorporating 'memory' through utterances that recall events from previous interactions significantly increases the learner's ability to perform a pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memory was perceived as less likeable and the instructions given as harder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory. In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy. This work has a large potential influence in the field of interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly add in human-like features, such as, memory that improve task performance without considering the potential detrimental effects to the perceived empathy and likeability.
We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a ... more We present a study that investigates the effect of incorporating memory in the interaction for a virtual robotic tutor in terms of helping children achieve a pedagogical goal and the perceived likeability and empathy of the tutor. The domain is a virtual robotic tutor who is guiding and helping learners through a mobile Treasure Hunt exercise that tests their map reading skills. The contribution described in this paper is the discovery that incorporating ‘memory’ through utterances that recall events from previous interactions significantly increases the learner’s ability to perform a pedagogical task. However, the virtual tutor with memory was perceived as less likeable and the instructions given as harder to follow than with a virtual tutor without memory. In addition, there was a significant drop in perceived empathy. This work has a large potential influence in the field of interaction design for agents as one cannot blindly add in human-like features, such as, memory that impro...
With the dominant trope of the computer as adversary rather than enabler, reinforcement learning ... more With the dominant trope of the computer as adversary rather than enabler, reinforcement learning for games has mainly focused on the ability of agents to compete and win. Although cooperation is a product of learning, of understanding the player's requirements and applying agents' competences to fulfil them, there has been little investigation of reinforcement learning for cooperation in games. Reinforcement learning results in the agent adapting and changing, however, there are concerns that such adaptivity could alienate users if their cooperative agent outperforms them. To explore this, the paper outlines the development and training of cooperative agents reporting users' positive response to adaptive cooperation in games.
Digital Creativity, 2018
This paper discusses a virtual reality experience for a contemporary sculpture park, Jupiter Artl... more This paper discusses a virtual reality experience for a contemporary sculpture park, Jupiter Artland, developed in Minecraft targeting 9-11-year-old children. Issues of fidelity, realism and authenticity are considered, examining the use of Minecraft to create visual representations loosely coupled with reality that generate affective responses. We discuss the build of our virtual sculpture park outlining our approach to creating a facsimile of the sculpture park through adopting practices from the Minecraft community and refining and improving the artworks and experience informed by a class of 9-10 year old children. Using the real and virtual sculpture parks we explore the impact of engaging with the real before the virtual Jupiter Artland and vice versa, with the results from a three class study outlined in this paper.
Digital technology, the Internet and mobile communication have made picture taking and sharing ub... more Digital technology, the Internet and mobile communication have made picture taking and sharing ubiquitous. The photograph with its long track record as a representational artefact now portrays individuals in ever broader contexts. The once distinctive practice of the snapshot aesthetic in capturing the banal and everyday has become culturally pervasive and children are key creators, producers and sharers of digital photographs. Designers of innovative digital media for children and young people face real problems in establishing requirements. Early experiments using children's photographs to inspire design and game evaluation methods led to tangible improvements in the user experience. To date however, the benefits of a robust discourse on the vernacular photograph in this context have come secondary to the pragmatics of design. This paper will explore the role of the photograph as a cultural arbitrator in the design of innovative software for personal and social education. It will examine the construct of the photographic index and its changing value in dialogue associated with digital images; will consider how this inherently ambiguous dimension of human experience can be investigated to better appreciate children's affective and cognitive responses to photographs in design contexts and will discuss the benefits and challenges of harnessing the photograph as a cultural arbitrator.
Electronic Workshops in Computing, 2007
This paper reports on a case study of a participatory technique that focuses on gathering context... more This paper reports on a case study of a participatory technique that focuses on gathering contextual information from users to assist the analysis and design process. It presents a participatory methodology based upon a photo-elicitation approach combined with Lomo photography practices and group-centric analysis aimed at children and teenagers in order to draw together design requirements specifically for them. The paper discusses the use of this approach for designing a multimedia learning application on water safety aimed at 11-13 year olds, with results highlighting the benefits of this approach for creating appropriate designs.
HCI 2018, 2018
This paper discusses a mixed reality that intertwines two parallel spaces, a real and a virtual c... more This paper discusses a mixed reality that intertwines two parallel spaces, a real and a virtual contemporary sculpture park. With the goal to create a game that motivated children to explore the park and engage with the artworks, we engaged with children as informants. We developed a cast of characters based on the children's input that lived in the sculpture park. Using the characters as inspiration we created a three-act narrative, with the canonical trajectory provided as a sequential clues treasure hunt. The clues are integrated into character dialogue, with traversal and transitions reinforced through the narrative. Although the narrative and game were designed for a collaborative, multiuser , multi-device experience, the characters, narrative and experience were rapidly repurposed for an individual game on a mobile phone. This re-purposing focused on the transitions, using dramatic narrative to reinforce and mask reality change. Our results are positive, children enjoyed the mixed reality experiences and are keen to engage in different realities. Re-purposing assets, such as characters and narratives as well as virtual spaces is effective, enabling rapid development of similar, yet very different mixed reality experiences.
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2017
Proceedings of the The 15th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children, 2016
This paper focuses on achieving optimal responses through supporting children's judgements, using... more This paper focuses on achieving optimal responses through supporting children's judgements, using Smiley Face Likert scales as a rating scale for quantitative questions in evaluations. It highlights the need to provide appropriate methods for children to communicate judgements, highlighting that the traditional Smiley Face Likert scale does not provide an appropriate method. The paper outlines a range of studies, identifying that to achieve differentiated data and full use of rating scales by children that faces with positive emotions should be used within Smiley Face Likert scales. The proposed rating method, the Five Degrees of Happiness Smiley Face Likert scale, was used in a largescale summative evaluation of a Serious Game resulting in variance within and between children, with all points of the scale used.
2016 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), 2016
In this video submission, we describe a scenario developed in the EMOTE project. The overall goal... more In this video submission, we describe a scenario developed in the EMOTE project. The overall goal of the EMOTE project is to develop an empathic robot tutor for 11-13 year old school students in an educational setting. The pedagogical domain here is to assist students in learning and testing their map-reading skills typically learned as part of the geography curriculum in schools. We show this scenario with a NAO robot interacting with the students whilst performing mapreading tasks on a touch-screen device in this video.
Through the Internet and mobile technologies teenagers immerse themselves in networks of social r... more Through the Internet and mobile technologies teenagers immerse themselves in networks of social relationships that often provide unhindered terrain for the cyberbully. Encouraging teenagers to verbalise about relationships with people they cannot see face to face is particularly problematic. Here, we used the generation of visual imagery during a role play activity with over 400 11 to 18 year olds to gain a greater understanding of cyberbullying. Teenagers were asked to carry out a web design activity about cyberbullying; this provided an appropriate context in which they could generate visual data and yielded 129 storyboards. Participants were in role as designers throughout and very open, fluid and productive in the task. Visual analysis highlighted teenagers's reliance on their understanding of physical bullying to portray the cyberbully and identified more concrete manifestations of the cyberbullying threat. The use of a drawing approach with teenagers proved highly productive and the value of tapping into teenagers sophisticated visual language to help them express with great clarity the things that they find difficult to talk about is discussed.
Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Interaction Design and Children - IDC '12, 2012
Archive photographs are used widely in heritage education, but the photographic experience and ou... more Archive photographs are used widely in heritage education, but the photographic experience and our understanding of it, is poorer than it could be. This is primarily because the learning often fails to harness a photograph's tangible indexical link with the past, but also because the instability of photographic meaning requires that we assign explicit labels for historic purposes, without always being fully cognisant of the impact. Research has shown that manipulating defined realness does affect adults emotional and cognitive responses to photographs, but no similar studies have been undertaken to date with children. Pragmatics of recreating the experience of looking at actual archive photographs remains a significant barrier, but the uptake of small, mobile tablet devices offers new opportunities to investigate what we have described here as children's indexical encounter with photographs. In this study children were shown matched pairs of natural and staged archive images, across three viewing conditions, (i) as real archive photographs and as (ii) digitised images on tablet and (iii) large flat screen devices. Children's emotional responses to natural archive images was significantly stronger when these were viewed as real archive photographs, but cognitive responses to natural photographs were significantly greater when these were viewed on tablets. Results are discussed with reference to the indexical experience and how an understanding of photographic properties can help tailor better visual learning experiences for children both in a heritage education context and in other disciplines.
Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology - ACE '04, 2004
The growth of the mobile gaming market offers considerable potential for the deployment of engagi... more The growth of the mobile gaming market offers considerable potential for the deployment of engaging and compelling games constructed using AI components and techniques. This paper discusses a rule-based approach for constructing lightweight Game AI systems for deployment on mobile devices. The development environment and the mimosa programming language for constructing Game AI components are outlined. A prototype game of Texas Hold'em Poker implemented using this environment is described. Ideas for future work, including the development of games mentors for deployment on mobile devices are briefly presented.
Intelligent Tutoring Systems, 2004
An evaluation study using a trailer approach of a Virtual Learning Environment populated with ani... more An evaluation study using a trailer approach of a Virtual Learning Environment populated with animated characters focusing on physical bullying was carried out with three stakeholder groups, (children, teachers and experts) to examine their attitudes and empathic styles about the characters and storyline believability. Results from 127 children and 95 adults revealed that children expressed the most favourable views towards the characters and the highest levels of believability towards the bullying storyline. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of child-informant processes in leading the design of child-based systems and the use of animated cartoon characters alongside storyline narratives to incite engaging interactions.
Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems common ground - CHI '96, 1996
The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to imp... more The introduction of HCI to Bane Sabadell is described, providing a brief history. Attempts to improve application usability and to encourage a focus on HCI issues are detailed. Several applications are described, identifying the success of the incorporation of HCI at Bane Sabadell. INTRODUCTION OF HCI TO BANC SABADELL Bane Sabadell is a medium sized Spanish bank, with 400 branches and 4000 employees. The inforrnatics division has 200 employees, who develop applications and provide user support. Programming is provided by external companies. Before 1990, there was a reliance on character based interfaces. In 1989, an application with a graphical interface, BOSS which provides transactional operations, was initiated. In its pre-introduction phase a human factors evaluation was performed. The resulting savings highlighted HCI potential and identified a need for HCI expertise. In 1994, an HCI specialist was employed fill-time. Since then, an HCI group, now consisting of 3 people, has evolved which provides support to Project Heads for usability issues, interface design and identification of user needs. BANC SABADELL NEEDS AND REQUIREMENTS Bane Sabadell has a dual language policy, and applications are produced in Catalan and Spanish. In-house development permits the development of customised applications and to facilitate this we have purchased an interface design tool. @ Copyright on this material is held by the author(s) Application homogeneity is encouraged to reduce costs of training, development and maintenance, demanding HCI group effort in determining how varying user needs cam be supported with the same application. HCI AND APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT Knowledge transfer has been facilitated through producing interface design guidelines, an important issue as there is little HCI information in Catalan (the informatics division working language). Interface standards have been produced for applications which use software such as MicroSotl Access. A BOSS interface generator permits rapid development whilst ensuring consistency to in-house standards. To ensure high quality graphical design and a consistent corporate image for our InterNet web, a Page Editor has been developed which has a defined set of graphical elements and interaction standards. Recent activities include the use of iterative design and rapid prototyping. This enables project costing to remain acceptable, whilst permitting savings due to usability problem discovery early in the lifecycle. Prototyping has facilitated communication with users, improving input of constructive criticism and reducing misunderstandings. Channels for user ideas and improvements are provided through an “Initiative Competition. ” Suggestions vary from simple improvements to task structures up to ideas for full scale projects. Each suggestion is evaluated for improvement in productivity, quality (for clients and users) and costbenefits. Users are asked to rank applications monthly, helping to identify unsuccessfid applications which may need usability testing and modification. The HCI group is extending the project lifecycle to include issues such as usability goal setting, user testing
Proceeding of the 2004 conference on Interaction design and children building a community - IDC '04, 2004
This poster considers the use of storyboards, in a classroom setting with children in the 8-12 ag... more This poster considers the use of storyboards, in a classroom setting with children in the 8-12 age group. The storyboarding method allowed children to both generate and evaluate scenarios for a virtual world populated by synthetic characters for exploring bullying issues. This approach has assisted children in the process of visualising agent design and verbalising opinions. It has resulted in design implications that have emerged from enabling children to have a voice in the technology process.
The Florida AI Research Society Conference, 1998
Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and... more Data modelling is an important skill tbr students undertaking university courses in computing and Infi~rnlation Systems. It is a complex task which is not currently well provided with tool based support. This paper describes extensions to a learning environment for data modelling which is based on a text based virtual reality panldigm. This learning environment has been enhanced by the
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 2009