Developing and Analyzing Immersive Game Technologies and Components for Motivation, Wellbeing, and Guidance

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Game technologies have become ubiquitous in our lives as a crucial supplement to wearable computing devices, mobile health trackers, and behaviour-change and social networking applications. Digital games are known for capturing our attention for hours at a time, and for encouraging repeated and continued technology use, making them an ideal vector for motivating behaviour change, helping us to improve our health, social life, and learning. Popular emerging game technologies range from location-tracking games using wearable devices and mobile phones to completely immersive technologies using virtual reality (VR) headsets and surround-sound headphones. However, these technologies are not limited to digital games only. To maximize the advantage of these new and emerging game technologies, we need to investigate how they can improve human well-being and how we can leverage them to motivate and train people. We need to understand the benefits and limitations of these technologies to be able to develop them effectively and use them in the best possible ways.******Game (or gameful) design is not restricted to actual games. Gameful design elements infuse software and applications that we use in multiple contexts every day, such as to improve our financial awareness or our health. This phenomenon, known as 'gamification', integrates game components (or game mechanics) into existing technologies, systems, and processes. In addition to understanding game technologies, we need to develop a better understanding of game components used in gamification, such as status indicators, rewards, social pressures, progression, collection, and quests. The 'user experience' (UX) related to these gamified components should be studied, so that we can better understand the interrelationships between game components and learning, behaviour change, and increased human wellbeing.******I propose to research development techniques and algorithms to build immersive game systems that can motivate us, improve our wellbeing, and guide us in making decisions. As part of this, we plan to research how games can help us improve mental, physical, or emotional wellbeing. We will investigate what compels and motivates people to use health technology. We will also study how we can build better learning applications using gameful design components to guide us (and what components are most effective for training and learning in specialized fields such as language acquisition, economics, or training in operating room protocols). We also intend to examine game atmosphere as a major factor in motivating play. For example, we'll interrogate the impact of game audio cues as game design components to make novel technologies more immersive and engaging. Finally, we will study how personalization and customization of game components can lead to more motivating game technologies which are individually adapted to players' preferences.