Better Living with Motion Sensors
All the major game consoles now have movement sensors, as do most smart phones, and cameras capable of motion detection are everywhere in our daily lives. Taking full advantage of this radical change in input possibilities requires an equally radical shift in design thinking and aims. Our panel will show and discuss examples of playful movement-based experiences on a range of platforms that take on challenges such as reducing math anxiety, building trust and connection, and making login so pleasurable we *want* to do it often. The panel includes three researcher/designers with experience building and writing about/discussing movement-based interaction, and a moderator who manages one of NYC’s best-known independent game venues. Why does movement design matter for everyday interface design?
Presenters
Diane Tucker is a gesture designer and researcher, game designer, and producer. She has a special focus on employing the body and gesture to develop of new forms of emotionally compelling gestural interaction based on an understanding of the interrelationships among movement, emotion, and story. Kotaku called her game, Mother Nature, “The Best Kinect Game You’ve Never Heard Of (and Maybe the Best of them All).” She is a designer and producer at University of Southern California’s Creative Media and Behavioral Health Center, where she and teammates are creating a game that transforms prescribed rehabilitative exercise into gameplay.
Tucker was named a finalist in the Game Competition of the International Conference on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology and – against a field of 68 -- became one of five finalists (and the sole non-European) selected to compete in the Games for Health Europe competition. She will be speaking at TEDxMaastricht this spring.
Before moving into games, Diane developed documentaries and a feature film for the BBC and Channel 4 (UK); she later moved into news, where she ultimately ran the New York News Bureau for the BBC. At Swarthmore, Harvard and BBC, Tucker engaged in extensive study of world-building – how some religious and political groups cast their members in a role and give their world a look and story – all to increase immersion and to transform spectators into participants and believers. She is a graduate of Swarthmore, Harvard and USC’s Interactive Media Division.
Katherine Isbister is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at NYU-Poly, where she is Research Director of the Game Innovation Lab (http://gil.cite.poly.edu). Her work focuses on broadening the social and emotional palette of everyday interaction with technology, combining Human Computer Interaction with Game Design Research. She uses games as research artifacts—her recent work has focused on movement-based interaction using game controllers and other movement sensing devices such as the Kinect and Move, iOS devices, and surveillance cameras. Isbister was selected in 1999 as one of MIT Technology Review’s TR 100 Young Innovators, and in 2011 received the Humboldt Experience Researcher Award. She has received funding from NSF, Microsoft Research, Bell Labs, and Yahoo Research, among others. Her work has been covered by Wired, Scientific American, NPR, Forbes, and the BBC.
Matt Parker is a new media artist and game designer. As an artist,
his interest lies in exploring the intersection of the physical and
digital worlds. His work has been displayed at the American Museum of
Natural History, SIGGRAPH Asia, the NY Hall of Science, Museum of the
Moving Image, FILE Games Rio, Sony Wonder Technology Lab, and many
other venues. His game Lucid was a finalist in Android's Developer
Challenge 2 and his game Recurse was a finalist for Indiecade 2010.
His project Lumarca won the "Create the Future" Prize at the World
Maker Faire 2010.
Matt earned his B.A. in Computer Science from Vassar college and a
Masters from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP). He
has served as a new media researcher and adjunct faculty member at NYU since 2009. He is currently a visiting professor at Sarah Lawrence
College and an Artist in Residence at Eyebeam Art and Technology
Center.
As a former student of NYU’s ITP program, Syed been involved in various transmedia projects that explore relationships and create dialogues between humans and machines. At ITP he mainly focused on creating games that wove gameplay into social spaces that took the form of arcades, LARPS, and ARGs. Recently he has been running a D.I.Y. independent video game arcade called Babycastles. Babycastles provides a space for people to exhibit their work within a social context of an Arcade. Currently, Syed is working with the Social Game Lab team as a consultant on their current game development endeavors.
Monday, March 12
