1. Intro to our world and the problem at hand

WELCOME TO OUR BLOG!

We are UX Veikot: a group of TUNI students interested in solving the problem of how to engage online gamers (regular players) to solve real life problems inside multiplayer game. Our aim is to create a viable and scalable solution for our client, Gofore.

Here is our team:

Hi! I’m Aura and I’m a 23-year-old horse girl from Tampere. I’m studying computer science for fifth year now. 

Hello! I am Omar, 24 years old and this is my fifth year studying computer science. This is my second year on the human-technology interaction master’s program. 

Hi! I'm Annika, I'm a Human-technology interaction (HTI) masters program student as well as work in human resources. I have a diverse background from business studies, social psychology, law, computer science and mathematical sciences...yikes. I love applied theories. 

Hi!I am Ella, 24-year-old master's student in human-computer interaction program. I am currently working as a web developer.

Topic of your team assignment 

Our client is Gofore and they are wondering how the growing segment of gamers (here defined as people regularly playing multiplayer online games) could be harnessed to solve real life problems in a gamified context. The idea behind this thought is motivated by the assumption that gamers are dedicated problem solvers who put a lot of time and energy into their efforts to get better results in their games, so why not guide their energy towards public good for example solving problems related to climate change. Even if the problems at hand are related to the real world, the gamified context lets the players use their imagination and together innovate ideas to solve the problems at hand through play. We as a team are dedicated to come up with a solution that is guided by human centered design principles testing the idea in various points with our main stake holders of gamers as well as Gofore. The solution is anchored into the future time frame giving us more room to think about solutions without the constrains of the technologies used at this time.

Gofore has given our team freedom to define the focus and the details of the problem. Since the topic of problem solving by gamers was quite broad, we first narrowed it to concentrate on player recruiting strategies and technologies, possibly looking at network science and motivational theories. The idea behind this was that it is important to get the right gamers with diverse backgrounds yet similar interests to work as a team to solve real life problems through purposeful play. We thought about automated digital social matching of players with for example similar interests and values. This player matching could be scalable to multiple situations.

As our knowledge grow by talking to gamers, we learned about privacy concerns they had from the data gathering that recommendation engines would need. Thus we decided to switch our main focus to the next step from player recruiting to the actual problem solving context and what methods to use to get the gamers to stick and return to the game. 

Team goals and evaluation process 

Our goal is to design a solution for an online multiplayer problem solving game context that will also be useful and innovative. We plan on evaluating the progress by asking for feedback from our main stakeholders and taking notes of what needs to be changed. We also plan on evaluating our design against general design principles from human-technology interaction. 

At the same time as we are creating a product, we are learning new theories and ideas and how the whole human centered product development works. We are also very interested in the possibilities to learn and apply for example gamification elements to the solution. The time frame being in the future, we are also able to keep our mind open and test our ideas of for example including futuristic technologies.  

How does it make you feel?

When designing in a human centered way, it is important to take the experience and the feelings of the product use into consideration, not just the functionality (Hassenzahl, 2010). This is even more evident when the product is a purposeful game where one of the functionalities of the product can be seen as getting a fun experience. But being a purposeful game, it needs to also enhance the players knowledge while creating emotions to keep the player interested. When the connection from knowledge to emotion is strong, it can lead to a change in the person for example changing his/her thinking or even the behavior towards planet friendly choices. 

KNOW -> FEEL -> ACT

The connection that humans have with technology is fundamentally social and full of emotions. The same principles apply to humans interacting with technology (for example playing a game) as in human-to-human interaction. For those who think this seems unlikely, it is good to know that this is a widely studied topic and the level of technology doesn't change the interaction. Thus the interaction features of the game playing should support the feeling of natural multimodal communication. (Nass et al. 1994) One good example from this need for natural multimodal communication is the current situation of covid19 making everyone meet online through Teams or other applications, where the presenter seems to always need a reassurance of the audience if they can see or hear him/her since the technologies at this point does not give the same natural communication feeling people have while talking face to face. Because of this, we think future technologies such as affective computing could be useful. Also, we are thinking about the use of wearables to enhance the natural communication as well as giving data to the system to be able to adapt to users interactions and emotions. Wearables can make the game experience more intense and captivating. If choosing to use affective computing one could choose if they wish to use it in memory loosing functionality or for the system to learn over time and adapt better to their ways.

Our goal is to make the gamer feel captivated, challenged and to enjoy the experience of the purposeful game. With these emotions we feel that there is a possibility to change the world one player at a time.

Definitions of important topics/concepts in our problem solving space:

Multiplayer games: Two or more people playing a game on the computer and competing or cooperating with each other (Wikipedia)

Gamification: It is about evoking the experiences and feelings that playing a game gives through game design methods in a non-game context. (Hamari, 2015)

Forms of play used in gamification: Competition, chance, role playing and loss-of-control. A balance of having rules and being spontaneous (even breaking rules). (Caillois)

Affective computing: Systems that can recognize, interpret and simulate human emotions.(Wikipedia)

Wearable: electronic devices that can be for example worn as accessories or be embedded in clothing 

Social matching: "Systems that recommend people to each other" (Terveen, McDonald, 2005)

Practicalities of the team work:

Our team work is done remotely using multiple communication tools. We have decided to use WhatsApp as the main tool to notify each other since all the team members have a quick access to it from their phone. As WhatsApp is not the best tool for sharing files, we are also using Microsoft Teams. Weekly team meetings are done through Teams voice calls.  

We have decided to make all the decisions together with all team members contributing. Conflicts will be solved as soon as possible or at the latest together in the weekly meetings. Everyone is responsible for informing others if there are delays to agreed deadlines or other problems.

Our team work is based on trust that everyone will contribute. Our weekly tasks will be divided equally during the weekly meetings. We have decided to have an open communication and flexibility. We will try to divide the work so that everyone can concentrate more on the part of the project they are most interested of. 

Short summary of each team member’s contribution/tasks

Ella's strengths are coming up with new ideas and creative thinking. She has tried to come up with creative solutions to the assignment at hand. She thought it would be good to maybe use video game players as a test subjects in different disaster situations to collect data how different people behave in those situations. We might take a different route but it is an interesting subject. She uses her prior knowledge in games, knowledge she already has and also some sources Annika has provided.

Annika is interested in the theoretical background and modelling an applied strategy from theories. As she doesn't have a gaming background, she can offer ideas outside of the box. In the beginning phase of the project she has contributed to the team by searching and sharing related articles and theories to inspire the project work. She will also share her knowledge from her social psychology background, network science interest and from ongoing gamification course. She has also been the contact person to Gofore in organizing the work. Later in the weeks Annika was responsible for creating more content and harmonizing this blog post 1.

Omar is conscientious and always does his agreed part of the work. In the beginning phase, he started the team's blog with Aura. They wrote down all the information they could before having a discussion with the team. Omar is experienced video gamer, so he has a lot of knowledge to share with the team during the whole project.

Aura is interested in prototyping and brainstorming. She has knowledge and experience in different platform games that will help with group's topic. In the beginning she created the blog and started filling this first blogpost with Omar.