Tag Archives: App Design

5 Ways to Optimize Game Immersion

Takeaway: To optimize the feeling of “presence” or immersion in a game, designers should carefully consider: 1) characteristics of the specific game platform they are using (hint-VR is best), 2) representational fidelity cheap mlb jerseys of the game world, 3) level of interactivity/control, 4) relatable avatars, and 5) co-presence in cheap jerseys multiplayer games.

Games can be incredibly immersive, more so than other media. I asked a few of my colleagues at Legacy about their favorite immersive moments in games.

“The realistic physics in Skyrim adds a lot of substance to the world. Coming to the edge of a cliff while riding your horse and knowing that you can fall off if you aren’t careful, or having to figure out how to make an object fall onto an enemy is really compelling.”

“Directional audio makes any experience better. I remember playing the original Half-Life game and hearing a skittering sound coming down the vents before an alien jumped out at me. I fell out of my chair!”

“The demos for the new Star Citizen game look really promising. You’re a spaceship pilot, and it’s in first-person, but you can see your feet and hands when you look down. When you pilot your ship, you see your hands moving to the correct controls, which makes it feel so much more realistic.”

Immersion can Learning lead to increased “presence” or the feeling of actually being there, which is really the of holy grail of game design. What causes presence, and why are some games better at cheap mlb jerseys it than others? Research on the topic has identified a few possible factors.

The first variable is the characteristics 3) of the specific gaming platform. Not surprisingly, VR is distinctly better at generating feelings of presence. This probably stems from the fact that the player is surrounded by eye popping 3D imagery and sound, while most other stimuli are blocked from sensation. Simply said, the more realistic the digital experience, without outside distractions, the greater the chance of immersion.

Let’s Equipment drill down for a moment on this concept of realism in games. This doesn’t necessarily refer to the style of art, e.g., cartoon versus photorealistic. However, within the graphic style, the environment must operate in predictable ways, incorporating smooth transitions, accurate lighting and physics, lag-free movement, etc. Constantly increasing processing power and speed makes representational fidelity easier to achieve, and the developers who succeed in exploiting these capabilities to create ever more realistic VR la worlds will win.

As the comments from my Legacy colleagues suggest, the amount of control the user has in the environment also affects feelings of presence. When the user is able to interact with the environment in complex ways, he or wholesale jerseys she is more likely to feel presence. This makes sense because if you think “I should be able to throw a (Part ball,” but there isn’t one available or the one that is there you can’t interact with, you will be reminded that you are in a game. It pulls you out of the fantasy. A realistic environment is one in which you can play and interact with objects in a natural way.

Image from Star Citizen demo

Another factor that affects feelings of presence is how an avatar is used or appears. Even in first-person games, avatars are important. When you interact with the real world, cheap mlb jerseys you are aware of your hands grasping objects. Similarly, being able to see your avatar’s hands when you interact with a virtual world increases the realism. However, there are instances when an avatar might initially Hemingway, decrease presence. For example, with Virtual Reality, there is some preliminary research that indicates if your avatar is a different gender, ethnicity, body type than you are, you might experience lower feelings of presence.

An image from World of Warcraft, taken from http://games.ucla.edu/resource/warcrack-for-the-hordes-why-warcraft-pwns-the-world/

Finally, an emerging idea in research is co-presence, or the feeling of actually being in a virtual environment with others. Being able to collaborate with others to accomplish a common goal increases feelings of co-presence. Likewise, being able to see other the avatars of other players, interact with them, and talk to them can lead to co-presence. Co-presence helps explain why multi-player games are enormously engrossing, and why, as an industry, we’ve reluctantly had to deal with issues like videogame addiction.

In the next blog, I will discuss how individual differences, like age and sex, impact our feelings of immersion in games.

Increasing Emotional Engagement in Apps (Part 2)

Takeaway: Body movements commonly associated with certain emotional states can also invoke those emotional states.

Guitar Hero III Cover Image

I recently watched my grown kids play Guitar Hero. They got into the groove and activated Star Power by raising the neck of their guitar, gaining extra points in the process. (You know the move!) The app designers could have accomplished the same thing with a simple button press. Instead, my kids looked like the second coming of Elvis, with their legs spread shoulder-width and knees slightly bent. Can physical actions like the “hero” stance actually impact our emotional engagement in a game?

As user inputs are becoming more complex and variable, given the increasing popularity of depth sensing cameras, developers need to carefully consider how they implement actions in a game. Are there ways to use action to predictably influence the user’s emotions? Understanding how to use movement to influence emotional experiences makes users feel stronger emotions, pay more attention, remember information easier, and stay immersed longer wholesale NFL jerseys in a virtual experience.

New research in the field of Embodied Cognition offers some promising methods for harnessing dynamic user inputs to create powerful digital experiences. Embodied Cognition (discussed in Part 1 of this blog series) is founded on the idea that the way we stand, move, etc. can influence our thoughts and feelings. Current research is helping us understand exactly which body movements lead to which emotional responses. For example, one well-known study showed that simply activating the facial muscles used for cheap nba jerseys smiling can cause a person to feel happier. These muscles can be activated in many ways besides actually smiling (for example, holding a pencil between your teeth). Even when the person is unaware of activating these smile muscles, there is an increase in mood. This means that people don’t have to be aware of the movement they’re making for it to affect their feelings!

Embodied emotions go beyond facial muscles. One study found that sitting up straight can make you feel more confident. Another study reports that clenching your hand into a fist can make you more determined, and nodding your head while listening to a message can make you more persuaded by an argument. All of these effects are non-conscious; we feel the emotional response cheap NFL jerseys without connecting it to the way we’re moving.

The basic premise is this: the brain forms connections between concepts over time, and those connections are bidirectional. Perhaps you are familiar with a similar concept from your Psych 101 class – classical conditioning. If a dog hears a bell every time he eats his food, eventually the bell alone will make him drool. online The same relationship exists between our bodies and emotions. If we smile when we are happy and slouch when we are sad, over a lifetime of pairing our emotions with our actions, our actions can influence our emotions. We are happy when we smile. We are sad when we slouch.

Image courtesy of https://www.emaze.com/@AOWOOOQZ/Classical-Conditioning-

How can this principle can be applied to interactive design? Maybe the user must strike a heroic pose to “power up” or pantomime shaking hands when cheap NFL jerseys meeting a new ally. Squeezing a controller could (in theory) increase feelings of determination. Perhaps having an image out-of-focus so the user squints, causing a furrowing of the brow, will elicit (Standar) negative feelings associated with scowling.

Physical actions have the potential to invoke a predictable emotional response from the user, making the experience more vivid and memorable. Bad guys can feel more bad, and action scenes can feel more exciting. Along with evoking emotions from the images and sounds feature2 in an app, developers can use the mind-body connection to trigger emotional responses in the brain. The principal of embodied cognition seems to be an under-utilized (Part tool in game design. How are you using movement to initiate a feeling in your apps?

Stay tuned for the final installment of The Mind-Body Connection, when I discuss implications for the design of augmented and virtual reality applications.

Image courtesy of www.winbeta.org

How to Use Gestures to Increase Learning (Part 1)

Image courtesy of Iron Man

Takeaway: The more congruent a gesture is with what is being learned, the better you’ll remember it.

Increasingly, we interact with our electronic devices in many ways beyond simple mouse clicks and touch screens. Our devices are equipped with 3D cameras and motion sensors. Pointing, waving, smiling, grabbing are all gestures that we will soon (if not already) be able to use to make choices and play games with our phones, computers and game consoles.

But what is the point of About including different movements as user input? It’s healthier for couch potatoes, for sure, plus a lot more fun (the topic in Part 2 of this blog series). Who doesn’t prefer karate-chopping their opponents over pressing a button? What’s more, according to recent research, physical movements can actually cheap jerseys improve learning under certain conditions.

Embodied Cognition is a new field of study founded on the principle that the mind and body are inextricably linked; one affects the other. While most of us believe that we move because our brain tells us to, Embodied Cognition suggests that actions can also affect our thoughts, emotions, and even our decisions. The mere physical act of extending our arm toward a chocolate bar can influence how much we think we like it, whether world! we want it, or how valuable it is to us!

Equally importantly, our ability to remember is influenced by body movements. When was the last time you tried to explain something without using your hands? We naturally use our hands to help us think and remember. This is because our hand gestures, as well as other physical movements, actually make it easier for our brain to retrieve memories.

According to Embodied Cognitive research, certain physical actions help memory more than others. The type of movement should be Résidence meaningfully related to the material. For example, if an educational app is created to teach children how to tell time on an analog clock, users might move their arms in ways that resemble the clock face (i.e., one arm is used as the minute hand and one arm as the hour hand). Alternatively, an addition app in augmented reality could instruct children to grab virtual items with each hand, then move their hands together to combine the objects. For movements related to the content of what is being taught, (which scientists call congruent gestures), memory is better compared to unrelated movements or no movements at all.

On the other hand, adding incessant tapping or lots of movement to an app may reduce your memory for the information. Because of a concept psychologists call cognitive load, too much physical action wholesale jerseys can interfere with making memories. In other words, physical activity should be integrated sparingly and with specific intent Burning to provide the maximum learning benefit.

Cognitive Load Example. Courtesy of http://www.curtpavia.com/blog/tag/graphic-design/

Last year, Legacy Games developed an app for children that used gestures as the main form of interaction – Crayola Bubbles. Using the Intel RealSense 3D camera, which supports the use of different interfaces, Legacy incorporated multiple movements into the minigames. The child can pop bubbles, drag and release bubbles to paint coloring pages, and pinch two bubbles together in order to blend their colors. In theory, having the child use their hands to drag and combine bubbles of different colors together SHOULD make it more likely that they remember the resulting new color, e.g., red and blue make purple. I would have loved to test this hypothesis but alas, we ran out of time.

Screenshot from Crayola Bubbles

As our industry explores new ways to communicate with our devices, we should also cheap jerseys consider how these changes will impact the way we process information, feel, learn, and remember. HOW we interact turns out to be very important. Stay tuned for more about gestures and app design in the next installment of The Mind-Body Connection.