Month: March 2007

Thankyou Sal for the heads up on this great event. The Human-Computer Interaction Design Department at School of Infomatics, Indiana University, are calling for workshop participants. The workshop ‘Transmedial Interactions and Digital Games’ is held in conjunction with the 4th International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology (http://www.ace2007.org/ ) on June 12th in Salzburg, Austria.

[Workshop Aims & Goals]

As virtual worlds and games grow in importance, present limitations in access to them limits their ability to achieve their potential. In persistent online worlds, peer actions and event changes have cumulative effects that are consequential to individuals, whether or not they are available, just as in real life.  But unlike real life, where we have plenty of tools to help us juggle multiple responsibilities, access into virtual worlds today occurs through a single access point; active participation requires a significant stationary commitment. Even the most dedicated users have difficulty keeping up with the dynamic information. To remain active and included, users need better ways to communicate, cooperate, and coordinate. Transmedial access, in which players access to a game and their characters/data is made possible across different devices, offers a promising solution to this problem. It also inaugurates a new category of interaction design: transmedial interaction.

This workshop explores the state of the art of transmedial interaction in games, which today unfortunately is often at most mere afterthought. It provides a participatory environment in which attendees can chart new paths forward, from developing viable business models and understanding the technical infrastructure to developing critical vocabularies and evaluative frameworks.

The workshop is intended for a broad audience, which will collaboratively achieve the following:

* Review current state-of-the-art examples of transmedia interactions in entertainment computing, especially video games

* Survey the technical infrastructure needed for transmedia interactions in digital games (e.g., feedback, adaptivity, etc.)

* Understand how the strength and weakness of different media channels shape player experiences during transmedia interactions

* Construct design guidelines for transmedial interactions and determine the components needed for successful and seamless transmedial interaction design

* Consider evaluation criteria for transmedial interactions
 
[Submission]

We encourage participation from diverse academic disciplines including design, HCI, computer science,, media and game studies, strategic communications, and psychology, as well as industry experts and practitioners, for a total of 15-20 people. Specifically, this workshop will create a synergy among the following target audiences:

* Online and mobile game designers interested in developing appropriate mechanisms to overcome the difficulty of designing for multiple media channels and cross-media experiences

* Interaction designers and researchers interested in human-human and human-machine interactions across devices, including mobile and ubiquitous computing

* Gaming industry pioneers interested in the exploration of novel ways to extend and integrate different media channels capacities to create cross-device and cross-network experiences for their target customers

* Entertainment computing marketers interested in identifying key challenges and solutions in promoting transmedial experiences

Sounds fabulous: http://hcid.informatics.indiana.edu/ace2007/

 

The first International Conference on Cross-Media Interaction Design (CMID) is happening very soon in Sweden. As some of you are aware, I’ve been asked to give a keynote address there. Very exciting! In preparation (mine and yours) I’ve written a primer paper. The primer outlines issues that I feel need to be considered in CMID. These issues, once addressed, will help the development of patterns (that is: repeatable solves). But they are basically all the variables I’ve been considering when designing for and analysing cross-media interaction. Hmmm, you probably don’t know what I mean by cross-media interaction. Well, to me, it is about designing for traversal across modes. For many years many designers and theorists have been developing and interrogating mono-medium interaction (websites for instance), human-computer-interaction, human-robot interaction, computer-mediated-communication between humans and so on. But what about forms that encourage a person to move from one platform to another? For example: getting up from watching the television and onto the Internet. How can entertertainment be designed to do this well? Well, this has been my interest of mine (and many others!) for the past few years and now I’ll get the chance to share some of my findings and ideas. In the meantime, I want to know more of yours. As a trigger, or encouraging gift, I offer my primer paper:

‘Patterns in Cross-Media Interaction Design: It’s much more than a URL…(Part 1)’: [pdf]

I call the paper a primer because it is not self-sufficient, it needs the second half, which will be delivered at the conference. Multi-platform delivery…geddit? The paper is very much a list of ingredients…I’d love to hear what wonderous creations or mutant scones you make out of them. Let me know an example of a good call-to-action you’ve witnessed or been told about. Recall an interesting, good or poor way you were encouraged to move between platforms and let me know. Reflect on the items that I list and let me know what answers or ideas or further complications you have.

And, of yes, I don’t mind examples of calls-to-action with a URL. 🙂

 

Max Giovagnoli – a long-time cyberspace and cross-media colleague and Head of Cross-Media.it, Link Campus, University of Malta Rome — is running the Cross-Media event in Italy. This is Max’s second cross-media event. It will be held in rome on the 24th of March and it looks like he has flown another colleague, Drew Davidson of Carnegie Mellon, over to present.

I wish you all the best with the event Max. 

Check out: http://www.cross-media.it/