"Now you need to laugh!": investigating fun in games with children

Up to now interaction in desktop games is mostly limited to keyboard and mouse input. This paper describes a desktop game, which uses emotional facial expressions as an additional input channel for creating a virtual flower in a digital universe. The game is being developed for children between 8 and 14 years old and was evaluated in a three-day field study with almost 300 children in the context of a shopping mall. The results show that more than two-thirds of the participants had fun playing the game. This was also confirmed by the high willingness to replay the game. Moreover, the study showed that the game provides the right amount of challenge to the players; it is approximately equally difficult for younger and older children.

[1]  Thomas W. Malone,et al.  Heuristics for designing enjoyable user interfaces: Lessons from computer games , 1982, CHI '82.

[2]  Franca Garzotto,et al.  Broadening children's involvement as design partners: from technology to , 2008, IDC.

[3]  Fredrik Nilbrink,et al.  Designing tangible interfaces for children's collaboration , 2004, CHI EA '04.

[4]  Wolmet Barendregt,et al.  A Structured Expert Evaluation Method for the Evaluation of Children's Computer Games , 2005, INTERACT.

[5]  Stephen J. Ceci,et al.  External and internal sources of variation in the creation of false reports in children , 1997 .

[6]  Manfred Tscheligi,et al.  Using emotion in games: emotional flowers , 2007, ACE '07.

[7]  Mohammad Obaid,et al.  "Feed the Fish": an affect-aware game , 2008, IE.

[8]  Mikael B. Skov,et al.  A review of research methods in children's technology design , 2005, IDC '05.

[9]  Manfred Tscheligi,et al.  Facial expressions as game input with different emotional feedback conditions , 2008, ACE '08.

[10]  Panos Markopoulos,et al.  On the design of Camelot, an outdoor game for children , 2006, IDC '06.

[11]  Tony Manninen,et al.  Interaction Forms and Communicative Actions in Multiplayer Games , 2003, Game Stud..

[12]  Douglas N. Gordin,et al.  Changing how and what children learn in school with computer-based technologies. , 2000, The Future of children.

[13]  Kirsten Risden,et al.  Evaluating computer game concepts with children , 2004, IDC '04.

[14]  Doug A. Bowman,et al.  Body-based interaction for desktop games , 2009, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[15]  Neema Moraveji,et al.  Comicboarding: using comics as proxies for participatory design with children , 2007, CHI.

[16]  Doug A. Bowman,et al.  Formalizing the Design, Evaluation, and Application of Interaction Techniques for Immersive Virtual Environments , 1999, J. Vis. Lang. Comput..

[17]  Stuart MacFarlane,et al.  Using the fun toolkit and other survey methods to gather opinions in child computer interaction , 2006, IDC '06.

[18]  Sean Hammond,et al.  Research Methods in Psychology , 1994 .

[19]  Takayuki Kanda,et al.  An affective guide robot in a shopping mall , 2009, 2009 4th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI).

[20]  Michael Burmester,et al.  AttrakDiff: Ein Fragebogen zur Messung wahrgenommener hedonischer und pragmatischer Qualität , 2003, MuC.

[21]  Matthew Kam,et al.  Designing digital games for rural children: a study of traditional village games in India , 2009, CHI.

[22]  Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze,et al.  Does Body Movement Engage You More in Digital Game Play? and Why? , 2007, ACII.

[23]  Daniel Moldt,et al.  Emotions and Multimodal Interface-Agents: A Sociological View , 2001, MuC.

[24]  Anthony Jameson,et al.  Decision-Theoretic Planning Meets User Requirements: Enhancements and Studies of an Intelligent Shopping Guide , 2005, Pervasive.

[25]  Michael Minge,et al.  Measuring multiple components of emotions in interactive contexts , 2006, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[26]  Martin Ludvigsen,et al.  Mission from Mars: a method for exploring user requirements for children in a narrative space , 2005, IDC '05.

[27]  Allison Druin,et al.  Working with young children as technology design partners , 2005, CACM.

[28]  R. Plutchik.  A GENERAL PSYCHOEVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF EMOTION , 1980 .

[29]  Wolmet Barendregt,et al.  Development and evaluation of the problem identification picture cards method , 2008, Cognition, Technology & Work.

[30]  Peta Wyeth,et al.  GameFlow: a model for evaluating player enjoyment in games , 2005, CIE.

[31]  Yoram Chisik,et al.  Reading in the wild: sociable literacy in practice , 2006, IDC '06.