Conclusiones y comparación con otras propuestas

All groups developed strategies to reach agreement as earlier reported in chapter 6 section 6.3.2. While six groups (G2, G4, G16, G18, G21, and G25) did this in advance the other nineteen groups developed strategies during game play. During the interview session, various participants mentioned that the strategies they adopted influenced how they collaborated and these are described below

8.7.1.1 Random pressing of controller buttons:

Five groups (G1, G2, G3, G4 and G18) indicated that they randomly pressed the controller buttons as seen in P36’s transcript (G18) “we thought of this idea where say X has his

controller… Now If B is for shoot, we could pick to press shoot. If I am pressing B all the time when X wants to press B cos I am pressing B randomly, and jack presses it just once it will come up once. And the same with me, he will have to keep pressing moving so I can move anytime I like” but participants in G1 and G4 later noticed the map and used it to collaborate as seen in

P1’s transcript (G1) “we were just pressing the buttonand we just looked at the corner to and saw what each other was pressing”; Participants in G17 and G22 also indicated they used the

map to collaborate during game play. 8.7.1.2 Pre-play negotiations

Participants in G25 negotiated a strategy before game play as seen in P49’s transcript “what we

did, err at the beginning we said when we want to shoot say shoot, when we want to move right say right, and when we want to move left say left before we started to play the game”.

174 8.7.1.3 Verbal Communication

Several groups (G3, G5, G6, G11, G12, G13, G14, G15, G16, G17, G19, G20, G21, G24) reported they communicated by talking to each other and telling each other what to do. One of the participants in G2, G12, G16, G22 and G25 dominated the interaction by instructing their partners on what actions to take as seen in P3’s transcript (G2) “I told him I was the leader and I

told him when to move and shoot”. Conversely, participants G17 noted that they helped each

other during gameplay as seen in the following transcript:

P33: “We were talking to each other like say go right! cos if I like shout at them, they won’t do it!”

P34: [laughs]

P33: “and if we did wrong, we were not shouting at them, we were just saying try to do it next time and like helping each other”.

8.7.1.4 Gameplay Judgements

One child in G15 also identified that sometimes they played the game without communicating verbally but trusted their gameplay judgements as seen in the transcript “Err, we did it as well

without talking- we both knew what to do”. While in some groups (G5, G13 and G15) their

gameplay judgements seemed to work in their favour, P31 in G16 indicated that they disagreed due to their poor judgments during game play as seen in the transcript “Erm, well cos

sometimes I though the bullet was coming down and it looked like it was gonna hit me but Sam didn’t think it was, so I just pressed it”. Three groups (G9, G12 and G18) identified they used the

bomb positions to know what direction to move (i.e. strategized using game features) as seen in P23’s transcript (G12) “you just see and know where the bombs were going and you know not to go there”.

8.7.1.5 Copying partner’s actions

One of the participants in G9 identified that imitating partner’s actions helped the group to be in agreement as seen in the following transcript “Just looking at what the other person was

doing and then doing the same just to shoot properly”. 8.7.2 Accidental interaction

This refers to when players generate game control inputs not planned or intended. As shown in the transcript below, participants in G21 mentioned that they disagreed in their controller input

175 either because they were in a ‘no interaction state’ or unintentionally did not press their controller buttons at the same time.

P41: “Somebody didn’t press it or we did not press it at the same time”.

P42: “It was an accident and we got really excited”

8.7.3 Harmonious gameplay

This refers to the maintenance of agreement (or lack of disagreement) in the participants’ actions. Only G7 identified this as shown in the transcript below:

P13: “We both just started using the same thing at the same time without realizing how to interact with it. But then we got into it…”

8.7.4 Collaboration

Ability to work together was reported by two groups G5 and G21 as a factor that helped them to reach agreement as seen in P42’s transcript (G21): “We worked together”. One child in G5 (P9) added that they enjoyed working together and it helped them to reach agreement as seen in the excerpt: “It was fun how we got err both have to do the same move to make it work. Some

people are used to single player controller but when you do it collaborative like we did, it kind of bring extra factor to the game”. This is the opposite of the result found in Chapter 5 as pairs

found it difficult to work together.

Additional issues were found from the results of the interview sessions conducted in the second pilot study (chapter 5) which covered a range of levels including technological, experience associated with using controller and familiarity with controller. While none of the participants experienced problems with the game pad, eight (16%) of the participants in the main study indicated they had problems reaching agreement with their partners and these were mainly human factors: difficulty collaborating with partners (identified by four participants), conflicts (identified by two of the participants), poor listening skills (identified by one participant) and disorganization (identified by one participant).

8.8 Design Guidelines

The work described in this thesis focused on one part of the ECA model (described in Chapter one), the High-Urgency-Low-effect space, where players need to interact quite rapidly with some degree of chance in the way decisions are reached. Based on the findings from this

176 research, several considerations that need to be taken into account when designing an engaging and interactive system that supports ECA are now presented.

 Visibility of Interaction: Interaction map was used in this work and findings showed this was useful as 75% of the participants who reported to have noticed the map, knew its purpose and used it to interact during gameplay (Chapter6 section 6.3.2). Visibility of action was also mentioned as one of the important factors that influenced participants interaction during the interview session conducted in chapter 5 of this research (section 5.3.7.7). It is therefore suggested that designers who wish to design for ECA should consider visualization in their work.

 Anticipate aggression: It is important to be aware that ECA can trigger aggressive behaviours in frustrated participants especially in boy groups. In this research, some participants felt frustrated particularly at the end of game play and argued, shouted, hit and blamed their partners. For example, in the main study reported in chapter 6, one of the pairs P8 in G4 (boy-boy group) got upset when the game ended and screamed at his partner and also his partners head. The partner responded by instructing P8 to stop hitting him and also hit P8 back on the head. While this behaviour was observed in a small number of cases, it needs to be considered in design of ECA applications. It is suggested that there should be a form of distraction to prevent the participants from displaying such behaviours at the end of the game for example a demo of how agreement is reached in ECA games.

 Unfamiliar interactions: The study reported in chapter 5 of this thesis showed that the 63% and 75% of the participants were familiar with game pad and PS2/PS3 controller. All apart from one participant had no prior experience with the. Also, the participants found the dancemat fun to play the game with but would not like to use it again (reported in chapter4 section 4.3.3 and chapter5 section 5.3.4). In terms of performance, participants performed worst with the dancemat and best with gamepad (chapter 5, section 5.3.6). The main study result reported in chapter 6 of this thesis showed that a large number of participants were familiar with button based technologies (20(40%) and 24(48%) of participants reported always playing games by pressing buttons on PlayStation and X-box controller respectively). Also, the post gameplay questionnaire revealed that participants (81.25%) found the game pad fun to play the game with and would like to use it again.

177 Based on these results, it is recommended to consider technologies users are familiar with when designing ECA games. However, if using unfamiliar technologies, it is important to understand that users may find it challenging to play ECA games with unfamiliar technologies.

 Encourage equitable collaboration: Some ‘bad’ collaboration behaviours were observed during gameplay (reported in chapter 6). These include use of derogatory verbalization (between G5 and G4), aggressive behaviours (G2, G4) and domineering behaviours which occurred in all groups (especially in the only mixed group in the main study reported in chapter 6) but did not persist for the entire game play sessions. Therefore, when users interact with the ECA game/application in a setting where there may be more than one groups (e.g. in the classroom), it is important to note that there may be the presence of some unacceptable behaviours such as use of derogatory verbalizations and aggressive behaviours and users (especially children) should always be supervised and never be left unattended.

 Appropriate interaction methods: The research reported in this thesis explored one part of the ECA model: the high-effect/high-urgency. Also, the pilot studies (reported in chapter 4 and chapter 5) explored ECA using three interaction devices: game pad, tangible controller and dance mat. Result from the studies showed that while the dance mat was fun to play the game with (8(67%) and 6(75%) of the participants rated the dance mat as most fun in the first and second pilot studies respectively), the participants would not like to use it again because it was frustrating (i.e. it was challenging for participants to put their foot in the right place on the mat while engaged in the game). It is therefore suggested that when designing games that support ECA, the choice of controller to use should be determined by which part of the ECA model the game falls into. For example, if the game falls within the high-effect/high-urgency part of the ECA model it can be frustrating for players to play the game with the dance mat due to the way the dance mat works.

 Ensure engagement: In the main study reported in chapter 6 and chapter 7, groups that performed well were engaged as they focused mostly on the screen whereas the poor performing groups were disengaged because they were distracted or just bored and lacked interest to continue. In the design of ECA games, it is important to consider ways to engage users as engagement in the game would lead to better performance.

178

 Reduce cognitive overload: There were indications from the findings reported in chapter 6 that some of the participants struggled with pressing the right buttons on the input device (for example, one of the pairs in G5 accidentally pressed the wrong button following the instruction given by his partner) and this needs to be accounted for in ECA systems. Therefore, it is suggested that input devices should be highlighted with different colour or signage for easier and proper identification of the keys on the device.  Explain game mechanics: There were issues with participants not understanding how

the game works despite explanations for example, one of the pairs in G4 at the beginning of game play asked the partner severally “Where am I?” probably thinking he was supposed to control a different game character. There was no immediate feedback in the game mechanics as found with normal games but this was effectively added in through the interaction map. It is suggested that to assist the users learn to play the game (game mechanics) and to collaborate in the game (for example develop strategy to agree and understand the influence of interactions on gameplay), provision of audio visual guidelines played at the beginning of game play be incorporated into the game design. In a situation where no audio visual guidelines are played, an approach such as scaffolding would need to be used

8.9 Conclusion

This chapter presented analysis of the key findings of the studies reported in this thesis highlighting the salient aspects of ECA explored in this work. It also presented the ECA model which describes the various contexts where ECA can be applied and concludes with a set of design guidelines for interaction designers. The next chapter summarizes the work in the entire thesis by answering the research questions and stating the contributions of the work to the HCI community as well as presented the limitations and directions for future work.

179