Call for Chapters

Game User Experience and Player-Centered Design

Editor: Barbaros Bostan, Bahcesehir University, Game Design Department, Turkey.

Planned to be published by Springer

Long Abstract Submission Deadline: May 15, 2019

User Experience (UX) is a branch of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) interested in improving the quality of the interaction between the user and the product. When applied to the rapidly growing billion dollar game industry, it becomes the Game User Experience or Player Experience (PX) that focus on the relationship between the player and the game. Game User Experience, the individual and personal experience of playing games, is a complex construct composed of behavioral, psychological and physiological levels. The complexity of the concept also effects the measurement of it, which has different approaches with differing strengths and weaknesses. The lack of consistent set of methods and tools that enable the measurement of entertainment experiences is one of the main challenges the Games User Research (GUR) community faces.

Therefore, a better understanding of the player experience is crucial for game designers and researchers: (1) to identify the basic components of game user experience for different members of the industry such as graphics experts, game designers and storytellers, (2) to specify the elements that can shape the game development cycle according to players’ preferences using a player-centered design approach, (3) to identify the impact of game user experience not only on the entertainment but also on the educational value of a game (4) to explain the evolution in the nature and measurement of game user experience with the introduction of new technologies such as VR and AR, (5) and to evaluate and to validate the different techniques for measuring the game user experience.

This book will provide an introduction and overview of the rapidly evolving topic of game user experience, presenting the new perspectives employed by researchers and the industry, and highlighting the recent empirical findings that illustrate the nature of it. This book will aim: (1) to provide a snapshot on research approaches/advances in game user experience, (2) to discuss issues, solutions, challenges, and needs for a better understanding of game experience in terms of the academic domains of HCI, psychology, human factors and game studies, and (3) to report recent research findings as well as industry case studies from both social sciences and engineering perspectives.

Special topics of interest for this book are:

• The evolution of game user experience in the new era of VR and AR
• The impact of game user experience on the game development cycles
• The relationship between game user experience and player enjoyment
• The exploration of game user experience in educational games
• Coverage of the user-centered design (UCD) principles in games

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following: Read more on Call: Chapters for “Game User Experience and Player-Centered Design”…

Call for Papers

International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS) 2019
November 19-23, 2019
Snowbird, Utah, USA

Conference website: https://icids.eae.utah.edu

Paper & Poster submission deadline: July 12th, 2019

ICIDS is the premier conference for researchers and practitioners concerned with studying digital interactive forms of narrative from a variety of perspectives, including theoretical, technological, and applied design lenses. The annual conference is an interdisciplinary gathering that combines technology-focused approaches with humanities-inspired theoretical inquiry, empirical research and artistic expression.

With this 12th edition of the conference, ICIDS continues into its second decade. The field of interactive narrative has now coalesced into a recognizable entity. This year’s organizers take this editionyear as an opportunity to expand on previously identified topics, related to this year’s special theme:

DESIGN FOUNDATIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND PRACTICES

This year’s conference features a special theme of “Design Foundations, Innovations, and Practices.” In addition to topics covered by previous iterations of ICIDS, the conference program will feature topic areas that focus on principles of design, advancements in the design lifecycle, and design process case studies for interactive storytelling.

This theme broadens prior topic areas within which we expand our design understanding.

• We target principles of design through:
  • HUMAN FACTORS via work on understanding cognitive and affective aspects of interactive storytelling, and
  • THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS via work on the design of storyworlds writ large.

• We target advancements in the design lifecycle through:
  • TECHNOLOGY via work on the role of digital game technologies in interactive storytelling, and
  • CULTURAL AND SOCIETAL IMPACT via work on the ethical, moral, social, and policy issues surrounding the design of interactive storytelling artifacts, including (but not limited to) issues surrounding representation, purposive interactive stories and games, and procedural rhetoric.

• We target design process case studies through:
  • INTERACTIVE DIGITAL NARRATIVE PRACTICES AND APPLICATIONS via work on industry production practices, live-action role-playing systems, and the use of interactive storytelling for learning and as tools for teaching.

Submissions are therefore invited on the following topics, which are understood as broad and inclusive of additional topics not mentioned here explicitly. Read more on Call: International Conference for Interactive Digital Storytelling (ICIDS) 2019…

Call for Papers

Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media
Special Issue: Uses and Effects of Smart Media: How AI Impacts User Experience

Submission Deadline: November 15, 2019

The increasing integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into digital media technologies has provided additional affordances and altered the nature of user experience, providing new audience engagement and gratification opportunities that meet human needs for information, communication and entertainment in a variety of innovative ways.

Read more on Call: “Uses and Effects of Smart Media: How AI Impacts User Experience” issue of Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media…

Call for Papers

Workshop: Designing Speech Synthesis for Intelligent Virtual Agents
At ACM IVA 2019 (https://iva2019.sciencesconf.org)
2nd July 2019
Paris, France
http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/matthewa/speechIVA2019wshop

Extended submission deadline: April 26, 2019

OVERVIEW

In this workshop we will look at the elements in an artificial voice that support an embodied (either digital or tangible) and dis-embodied form of an intelligent virtual agent (IVA). In this context the agent can be seen to perform, or act a role, where naturalness of the voice may be subservient to appropriateness, and communicating the character of the agent can be as important as the information it presents. We will introduce the current ways a voice can be made to have character, how this can be designed to fit a specific agent, and how such a voice can be effectively deployed.

The intended audience is academics and industry researchers who are tired of seeing their carefully created conversational agents spoilt by inappropriate speech synthesis voices, and who want to lead the way in which speech synthesis takes into account the design requirements of IVAs. The workshop is not primarily for speech technologists (although they are of course welcome) but rather the engineers and scientists exploring the use of IVAs, and are curious to see how modern speech synthesis can dramatically alter the way such agents are perceived and used.

ATTENDING

Attendees are encouraged to also attend the main conference but this is not a requirement. We request those interested to email matthewa@cereproc.com with the following information by April 26th 2019.

1. 100-200 word biography and main motivation for attending.
2. Sketch of an actual or imagined embodied agent that intends to use speech to converse or present dynamic content. The sketch could include pictures, example content and design motivations and could vary from well specified to speculative, from ground breaking to well understood domains. It could be a couple of pages to a paragraph. The pre-designs will be used to help the organizers select and formulate a design challenge of interest to the attendees.

Five of the submissions will be chosen for a short 7 minute + 3 minute question presentation at the workshop. Please` indicate if you would like to be considered for this. The submissions chosen will aim to give a varied and provocative view of potential use cases and speech interface designs. Read more on Call: Designing Speech Synthesis for Intelligent Virtual Agents – IVA 2019 Workshop…

Call for Abstracts

UCD Workshop on Implementing Machine Ethics
School of Computer Science, University College Dublin
2-3 July, 2019
https://aristotle.ucd.ie/

Confirmed keynote: Prof. Alan Winfield, Bristol Robotics Lab, University of West of England

Read more on Call: University College Dublin Workshop on Implementing Machine Ethics…

Call for Participation

Ethics Oversight and Committees for AI: Towards a Future Research Agenda
A Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities (WEH) workshop
Friday, May 10, 2019, 10am to 6pm
Big Data Institute, University of Oxford
https://www.weh.ox.ac.uk/upcoming-events/workshop-ethics-oversight-and-committees-for-ai-towards-a-future-research-agenda

Read more on Call: Ethics Oversight and Committees for AI: Towards a Future Research Agenda – University of Oxford workshop…

CALL FOR PAPERS AND PROPOSALS

Transdisciplinary AI 2019 (TransAI 2019)
September 25-27, 2019
Laguna Hills, California
http://www.TransAI.org

Submission deadline: July 1, 2019

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is concerned with computing technologies that allow machines to see, hear, talk, think, learn, and solve problems even above the level of human beings. On the one hand it allows data to be analyzed by real-time models that enable unprecedented levels of accuracy and efficiency. On the other hand it enables domain specific problem solving and knowledge discovery that cannot be easily done by humans.

Transdisciplinary AI 2019 (TransAI 2019), technically sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society, is an international forum focusing on the interactions between artificial intelligence (AI) and other research disciplines. It consists of themes that each addresses the applications of AI to a specific research domain as well as how domain specific applications may advance the research on AI.

The TransAI themes address two dimensions — technology and academic research domains so that technologies can be mapped to domain applications. The technology dimension includes, but is not limited to, the following:

• Semantic and cognitive aspects in different academic research domains
• Innovative operations using artificial intelligence
• Immersive environments
• Multimodal interactions
• Human/agent interactions
• Domain-specific problem solving
• Machine and deep learning
• Modelling of behaviour and activity generation
• Big data and analytics
• Dialogue modeling and generation
• System components of intelligent platforms
• Robotic intelligence

The academic research domain dimension consists of specific subdisciplines.

The conference proceedings will be submitted to the IEEE Xplore® and/or IEEE Computer Society Press digital library. Distinguished quality papers presented at the conference will be selected for the best paper/poster awards and for publication in internationally renowned journals (SCI, EI, and/or Scoups indexed). Read more on Call: Transdisciplinary AI 2019…

Call for Papers

The International Conference of Experience Design, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (XD2019GoldCoast)
14 – 16 August 2019
Gold Coast, Australia
https://www.griffith.edu.au/centre-design-innovation/XD2019GoldCoast

Submission deadline: April 19, 2019

The International Conference of Experience Design, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (XD2019GoldCoast) will be hosted by the Griffith Centre for Design and Innovation Research (CDAIR) at Griffiths Gold Coast campus.

The three-day conference brings together an international community of scholars and practitioners around the 2019 theme of “Exploring and Enhancing Experience” in relation to design, innovation and entrepreneurship in:

Architecture | Artificial Intelligence | Brand | Business | Communication | Computing | Data Science | Education | Engineering | Environment | Finance | Health | Information | Interaction | Media | Marketing | Management | Manufacturing | Policy | Product | Psychology | Robotics | Service | Sport | Space | Supply Chain | System |Technology | Tourism | Wearable

CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS

• world-leading keynote speakers from academia and industry
• a cross-disciplinary conference building bridges across expertise
• full paper (3,000–5,000 words) and short paper (1,500–2,000 words) submissions
• research track for innovative ideas, methods and findings
• industry track for applied knowledge, skills and techniques
• know-how workshops featuring progressive and pioneering industry skills and technologies
• creative workshops featuring innovative thinking processes, tools and techniques
• the beautiful Gold Coast, with easy access to Cairns (Great Barrier Reef) and the greater Queensland

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

• Lena Belin, Director of Community Insights, Capability Building, Queensland Public Service Commission
• Sean Chiu, Design Director, Alibaba and Executive Vice President, Lazada
• Philip Gerrans, Professor, Department of Philosophy, The University of Adelaide
• Richard Goosens, Professor and Chair, Department of Industrial Design, Delft University of Technology
• Kunpyo Lee, Chair Professor and Dean, School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
• Chee Peng Lim, Professor and Associate Director (Research), Institute for Intelligent Systems Research and Innovation, Deakin University

SUBMISSIONS

Papers:

We welcome any paper types including: conceptual, empirical, methodological, professional papers, as well as critical literature reviews and case studies. We are also open to any research approaches and contexts as far as the paper has a clear research question to address and reports results that can make some significant contribution relevant to the conference theme of “Exploring and Enhancing Experience”. Read more on Call: The International Conference of Experience Design, Innovation and Entrepreneurship (XD2019GoldCoast)…

Call for Workshop Papers + Keynote

4th International Workshop
PLAYABLE CITIES: THE INTERNET OF PLAY IN URBAN ENVIRONMENTS
https://sites.google.com/view/playablecities2019/home

This workshop will be held as part of the 5th IEEE International Conference on the Internet of People (IoP 2019; http://www.smart-world.org/2019/iop/), August 19-23, 2019, Leicester, UK.

Paper submission deadline: 26th April 2019

BACKGROUND

Following the success of the first (Utrecht, The Netherlands, 2016), the second (Funchal, Madeira, Portugal, 2017), and the third (Braga, Portugal, 2018) workshops on Playable Cities we are pleased to announce the 4th Playable Cities Workshop to be held on 19th August 2019 as part of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Internet of People (IoP 2019) in multicultural Leicester, England.

PLAYFULNESS AND THE (PLAYABLE) CITY

The notion of playable cities has recently been explored as a means of building on the ideas and infrastructure of the smart city to create novel interactions intended to inject fun and playfulness into urban environments both as a simple source of pleasure and as a means of facilitating and fostering urban and social interactions. The Playable City is a new term, introduced a number of years ago in Bristol, England and imagined as a counterpoint to ‘A Smart City’. From the Playable City website: “A Playable City is a city where people, hospitality and openness are key, enabling its residents and visitors to reconfigure and rewrite its services, places and stories.”

Cities by their very nature are utilitarian creations built to support the needs and/or represent the image of the communities that build them, however the nature of the urban environment is such that it invites play in both its construction (architecture) and the interactions that take place within its confines and as such the city is an ever changing living organism where the past and the present are intertwined in a myriad of physical and ephemeral facets of the landscape. On the face of it “the smart city” with its array of sensors and actuators designed to bring a higher level of efficiency to the management of urban services is equally utilitarian and banal. However, these sensors and the digital communication networks that unite them offer new opportunities for playful interaction by bringing to life inert objects such as park benches and garbage cans, preserving and visualizing previously lost bits of the urban experience and enabling a host of new interactions and experiences in addition to raising a number of new challenges and concerns.

In this workshop we wish to explore the ways in which the broad gamut of technologies that make up the smart city infrastructure can be harnessed to incorporate more playfulness into the daily life activities that take place within the city making the city not only more efficient but also more enjoyable to the people who live and work within its confines.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Embedding playfulness in outdoor daily life activities
• Playfulness and smart city infrastructure
• Robust sensor and actuator technology for playful urban environments
• Digital art and entertainment in urban environments
• Wearable computing in playful urban environments
• IoP technology and outdoor play for children and adults
• Enabling the disabled through playful interactions
• Social computing, community building, maker cultures, and playfulness

All submitted papers will undergo a blind review process by members of the workshop program committee. Accepted papers will be included as part of the official IoP 2019 conference proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society. Read more on Call: Playable Cities: The Internet of Play in Urban Environments (at IoP 2019)…