Browsing by Author "Graham, T.C. Nicholas"

Now showing 1 - 12 of 12
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    Exploring automation in digital tabletop board game
    (ACM, 2012) Wallace, James R.; Pape, Joseph; Chang, Yu-Ling Betty; McClelland, Phillip J.; Graham, T.C. Nicholas; Scott, Stacey D.; Hancock, Mark
    Digital tabletops present the opportunity to combine the social advantages of traditional tabletop games with the automation and streamlined gameplay of video games. However, it is unclear whether the addition of automation enhances or detracts from the game experience. A study was performed where groups played three versions of the cooperative board game Pandemic, with varying degrees of automation. The study revealed that while game automation can provide advantages to players, it can also negatively impact enjoyment, game state awareness, and flexibility in game play.
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    Gone but not forgotten: designing for disconnection in synchronous groupware
    (ACM, 2010) Gutwin, Carl; Graham, T.C. Nicholas; Wolfe, Chris; Wong, Nelson; de Alwis, Brian
    Synchronous groupware depends on the assumption that people are fully connected to the others in the group, but there are many situations (network delay, network outage, or explicit departure) where users are disconnected for various periods. There is little research dealing with disconnection in synchronous groupware from a user and application perspective; as a result, most current groupware systems do not handle disconnection events well, and several user-level problems occur. To address this limitation, we developed the Disco framework, a model for handling several types of disconnection in synchronous groupware. The framework considers how disconnections are identified, what senders and receivers should do during an absence, and what should be done with accumulated data upon reconnection. We have implemented the framework in three applications that show the feasibility, generality, and functionality of our ideas. Our framework is the first to deal with a full range of disconnection issues for synchronous groupware, and shows how groupware can better support the realities of distributed collaboration.
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    The human factors of consistency maintenance in multiplayer computer games
    (ACM, 2010) Savery, Cheryl; Graham, T.C. Nicholas; Gutwin, Carl
    Consistency maintenance (CM) techniques are a crucial part of many distributed systems, and are particularly important in networked games. In this paper we describe a framework of the human factors of CM, to help designers of networked games make better decisions about its use. The framework shows that there is wide variance in the CM requirements of different game situations, identifies the types of requirements that can be considered, and analyses the effects of several consistency schemes on user experience factors. To further explore these issues, we carried out a simulation study that compared four CM algorithms. The experiment confirms many of the predictions of the framework, and reveals additional subtleties of the algorithms. Our work is the first to look comprehensively at the tradeoffs and costs of CM, and our results are a strong starting point that will help designers improve on the user's quality of experience in distributed shared environments.
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    Improving Awareness of Automated Actions Using an Interactive Event Timeline
    (ACM, 2013) Chang, Y.-L. Betty; Mengual, Mylene; Parfett, Brian; Graham, T.C. Nicholas; Hancock, Mark; Scott, Stacey D.
    Digital tabletops provide an opportunity for automating complex tasks in collaborative domains involving planning and decision-making, such as strategic simulation in command and control. However, when automation leads to modification of the system's state, users may fail to understand how or why the state has changed, resulting in lower situation awareness and incorrect or suboptimal decisions. We present the design of an interactive event timeline that aims to improve situation awareness in tabletop systems that use automation. Our timeline enables exploration and analysis of automated system actions in a collaborative environment. We discuss two factors in the design of the timeline: the ownership of the timeline in multi-user situations and the location of the detailed visual feedback resulting from interaction with the timeline. We use a collaborative digital tabletop board game to illustrate this design concept.
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    It's about time: confronting latency in the development of groupware systems
    (ACM, 2011) Savery, Cheryl; Graham, T.C. Nicholas
    The presence of network latency leads to usability problems in distributed groupware applications. Example problems include difficulty synchronizing tightly-coupled collaboration, jarring changes in the user interface following the repair of conflicting operations, and confusion when participants discuss state that appears differently to each of them. Techniques exist that can help mitigate the effects of latency, both in the user interface and the groupware application. However, as these techniques necessitate the manipulation of state over time, the effort required to implement them can be significant. In this paper, we present timelines, a programming model allowing the explicit treatment of time in groupware applications. The model has been implemented as part of the Janus toolkit.
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    A low-cost infrastructure for tabletop games
    (ACM, 2008) Wolfe, Christopher; Smith, J. David; Graham, T.C. Nicholas
    Tabletop games provide an intimate gaming experience where groups of friends can interact in a shared space using shared physical props. Digital tabletop games show great promise in bringing this experience to video game players. However the cost of developing tabletop games is high due to the need for expensive hardware and complex software. In this paper, we introduce EquisFTIR, a low-cost hardware and software infrastructure for digital tabletop gaming. We illustrate the infrastructure through Asterocks, a novel tabletop game.
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    Raptor: sketching games with a tabletop computer
    (ACM, 2010) Smith, J. David; Graham, T.C. Nicholas
    Game sketching is used to identify enjoyable designs for digital games without the expense of fully implementing them. We present Raptor, a novel tool for sketching games. Raptor shows how table-top interaction can effectively support the ideation phase of game design by enabling collaboration in the design and testing process. Raptor heavily relies on simple gesture-based interaction, mixed-reality interaction involving physical props and digital artifacts, Wizard-of-Oz demonstration gameplay sketching, and fluid change of roles between designer and tester. An evaluation of Raptor using seven groups of three people showed that a sketching tool based on a tabletop computer indeed supports collaborative game sketching better than a more traditional PC-based tool.
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    Toward game orchestration: tangible manipulation of in-game experiences
    (ACM, 2012) Graham, T.C. Nicholas; Bellay, Quentin; Schumann, Irina; Sepasi, Amir
    We define game orchestration as the activity of creating experiences for game players at run-time. This paper presents a design space for game orchestration techniques, and describes two novel game orchestration systems.
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    Villains, architects and micro-managers: what tabula rasa teaches us about game orchestration
    (ACM, 2013) Graham, T.C. Nicholas; Schumann, Irina; Patel, Mrunal; Bellay, Quentin; Dachselt, Raimund
    Players of digital games are limited by the constraints of the game's implementation. Players cannot fly a kite, plant a tree or make friends with a dragon if these activities were not coded within the game. Game orchestration relaxes these restrictions by allowing players to create game narratives and settings as the game is being played. This enables players to express their creativity beyond the strictures of the game's implementation. We present Tabula Rasa, a novel game orchestration tool based on an efficient tabletop interface. Based on a study of 20 game orchestration sessions using Tabula Rasa, we identify five behavioural patterns adopted by orchestrators, and four styles of collaborative interaction between orchestrators and players. Finally, we present recommendations for designers of game orchestration systems.
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    What + when = how: The timelines approach to consistency in networked games
    (IEEE, 2011) Savery, Cheryl; Graham, T.C. Nicholas
    Consistency maintenance techniques used in networked multiplayer games require a tradeoff between the degree of consistency and the responsiveness to player commands. The choice of which technique is most appropriate depends upon the specific game situation. However, all techniques share the need to deal with time as well as with game state data. This can make implementing consistency maintenance techniques difficult. The solution is to have a programming model that is better able to deal with time. In this paper, we present such a programming model, timelines. Timelines allow for the explicit treatment of time and have been implemented as part of the Janus toolkit.
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    When Paper Meets Multi-Touch: A Study of Multi-Modal Interactions in Air Traffic Control
    (Springer, 2013) Savery, Cheryl; Hurter, Christophe; Lesbordes, Remi; Cordeil, Maxime; Graham, T.C. Nicholas
    For expert interfaces, it is not obvious whether providing multiple modes of interaction, each tuned to different sub-tasks, leads to a better user experience than providing a more limited set. In this paper, we investigate this question in the context of air traffic control. We present and analyze an augmented flight strip board offering several forms of interaction, including touch, digital pen and physical paper objects. We explore the technical challenges of adding finger detection to such a flight strip board and evaluate how expert air traffic controllers interact with the resulting system. We find that users are able to quickly adapt to the wide range of offered modalities. Users were not overburden by the choice of different modalities, and did not find it difficult to determine the appropriate modality to use for each interaction.