OK.
Hello.
My name is Roland Graf.
I'm a media artist and designer, and professor at the Stamps
School of Art and Design.
And like Luke said, I will co-present this paper
with Pallavi Benawri, who has graduated
from the School of Information this summer.
As you can see in the author's list,
we represent a larger team.
We are three faculty and four students
from four different schools at the university of Michigan.
And I want to emphasize that all of us
have been very committed to work on this project together.
So I start, and then hand over to Pallavi in a few minutes.
To provide the context for our study,
I want to briefly explain what inspired and motivated
what we are presenting today.
As a media artist and designer, I've
been collaborating for many years
on the variety of interactive installations with engineers.
And most of them, like Solar Ping Pong, the installation
in this video clip that I am going to show,
reframe the body and interactivity
in the built environment.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- What are they doing?
Look at this shit.
It's a pong game.
Look.
- Oh, that's awesome.
[END PLAYBACK]
So we showed this installation at different venues
around the world and received a lot of interesting feedback.
And long story short, we ended up
in a customer discovery program in which we explored
the potential of this technology to get
to the market in some form.
And one of the feedback that we received
came from 11-year-old who was very interested in Solar Pink
Pong from a sports perspective, but as a user of a power
wheelchair, he could not you access it
in the same way as the pedestrians
that you saw on the video.
And this feedback inspired us to shift
the focus of our further project development
to the design space of inclusive play and exercise.
And in this space, we noticed that there
is quite a big gap between research
on accessible exergames and adaptive sports.
And our design goal was to overcome--
to combine as much as possible the benefits of both worlds.
So the main contribution that we developed and present here
today is an interactive floor projection system
that we call iGYM--
"i" for inclusive play.
And our current implementation of this system
is an air hockey-inspired multiplayer game.
So at the core of this system, two design
elements that I have to explain.
The first is peripersonal circle interaction.
This is a projected circle on the floor,
visualizing the player's per person's space boundaries,
which is the immediate space surrounding the players bodies.
And with this circle, players can
manipulate a virtual target on the floor
by body movement or limb extension.
So for example, if I extend my arms or my feet,
the circle expands correspondingly.
And this actually feels quite similar to the body and shadow
play of Solar Ping Pong.
But unlike in Solar Ping Pong, players also
have the option to press a kick button
to simulate an arm or feet extension
and manipulate the target in that way.
Here you see our kick button prototype.
It comes with switches with different form factors
that can be body mounted on different positions.
And the second design element is adjustable game mechanics
that uses physics simulation to create a realistic ball game
environment.
And this element also allows balancing
players' individual differences in response time of mobility
by controlling parameters in such a way that--
such as the circle size and the target speed
of the virtual book.
And when we built the system, we tested it
first among our research team members
and then conducted pilot play tests.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[CHEERING SOUND EFFECT]
- [INAUDIBLE]
[CHEERING SOUND EFFECT]
[END PLAYBACK]
So during this pilot, we tested different parameters, actually
many different parameters, including the target speed,
the play field friction, the play field boundary elasticity,
which is how fast the target bounces back.
However, we saw that the speed parameter adjustments,
such as slowing down or increasing the target
speed for each player or play field side individually,
seemed to disrupt the game's flow
and was less effective as a player balancing
approach compared to the effects of adjusting the circle size.
And that's why we then decided to focus our study
on peripersonal circle adjustments using
three adaptation levels that Pallavi will explain.
So as Roland said, we defined three adaptation levels
for the study to isolate the effects of different elements
in the game.
In the first adaptation level, all players
were given peripersonal circles to hit the virtual target.
In the second adaptation level, players
could still use the peripersonal circle
similar to the first level, but in addition, we also
provided a kick button to all the players
with mobility disabilities.
And now by clicking this button, they could expand their circles
and now hit the virtual target.
Further adding onto the first two levels,
in the third adaptation level, players
were given the peripersonal circle, the kick button,
and, in addition, a balancing model
that defined the size of the circle
or the reach advantage of the players
based on performance in single player rounds.
So all of these adaptation levels and the study design
were centered around four main research questions
that we wanted to address with this study.
First, we wanted to know how players perceived the game
and the nature or benefit of the game itself.
Next, we wanted to uncover clear opinions about the kick button.
We hypothesized that players using wheelchairs
might feel an unfair disadvantage
when they are playing without the kick button.
We also wanted to find out which adaptation level
players preferred the most and hypothesized that adaptation
level three--
that is the one with the kick button
and the balancing model-- would be most preferred.
And finally, we wanted to understand
how players with different abilities
felt about playing with each other in a sport setting.
To answer all of these questions,
we recruited 12 participants and paired them up
in different constellations.
Our selection criteria for these participants
was that they are able to see, hear, and have enough response
capability to understand and play the game.
We had three 5-minute matches per pair.
So there was one match for each adaptation level.
And we also had a 4-minute single payer round.
This is what our study procedure looked like.
Participants and their parents first
completed assent forms and a pre-study questionnaire,
followed by system demonstration.
Our team observed player movement and strategy
throughout the gameplay and provided questionnaires
after each match.
At the end, we conducted semi-structured interviews
with each player.
And for analysis, we drew parallels
between performance, observations, and the interview
and questionnaire data.
There was a lot of interesting findings from my study.
First of all, we heard a lot of comparisons of iGYM
to sports such as soccer, hockey and air hockey,
with one player even exclaiming that they were like the hitter
thing in air hockey.
However, what players really liked about iGYM,
compared to some other adaptive sports,
was that it could be played without
any additional equipment.
The game was also considered competitive, fast-paced,
strategic and fun overall.
Most players said that the kick button that they used
was a good equalizer, and provided a lot more comfort
and control while at gameplay.
And as hypothesized, the condition C3,
that is the one with the kick button
and the balancing model both, was the most preferred out
of all three conditions, chosen by five out of 12 players.
But surprisingly, the next highest preferred condition
was C1, which only had the peripersonal circle and not
the kick button, because four players
said that they liked the challenge of playing
without a kick button.
Overall, participants said that they enjoyed playing
against people with different abilities,
because they mentioned that they don't usually
get to do that in a regular setting, in daily life.
Now I'll hand over back to Roland
to talk about some key takeaways from the study.
I can see the time keeper is already here.
So very quickly, these are some of the takeaways
that we think are key for the design of an inclusive system
in our setting.
Pallavi already mentioned that the multi-factorial player
preference is.
One of the unexpected findings also
is that, basically, if adaptation equipment is still
disability specific, it can also be
seen as imperative to inclusive play.
And particularly related to our system design,
the significance of the peripersonal circle
seems to go beyond usability concerns.
It also provided an equal representation of the players
on the play field.
So to conclude, based on our study,
we think that the system design of iGYM
opens up a new exciting space of inclusive play
that has a lot of potential.
But having said that, to study inclusive play,
we are aware that we have to address the player
experience much more holistically,
and particularly, the social players setting around it.
Here you see some examples that we observed
once the study was completed.
It prompted matches of four and more players,
children playing with the parents,
and players participating with other mobility aides
than with wheelchairs, such as crutches, for example.
Our primary goal with this project
is to further develop it as a system
and bring it from the lab to the field
and eventually to the market.
So if you're interested to join us or know
anybody that would support this mission, please let us know.
Thank you.
All right.
[APPLAUSE]
All right.
We have time for a couple of questions.
In the back there.
Last row.
Hi.
Thank you very much for this wonderful presentation.
I was wondering--
Sorry.
You are?
Can you say your name?
Oh, yes, sure.
I'm Dees Postma from the Netherlands, University
of Twente.
I was wondering if you have looked
at the stigmas around the peripersonal circle,
because I can imagine that people with disabilities
might find it stigmatizing to have
a large peripersonal circle.
Or is that not something that is--
So actually, the circle is the same.
The size doesn't--
I mean, we did a lot of tests, and, at least in our studies,
we didn't get any feedback in our research
about potential stigmas.
We actually had a different impression
that it was providing the same input modality.
And the feedback we got from the players, particularly
those using mobility aids, was, when they compared it
for example, to adaptive sport, that it seemed
more inclusive, basically.
It's not this kind of equipment that
limits other people to step in and play.
So it's a good point.
So far, we have not heard anything in this direction yet.
So it was not an issue?
It didn't come up.
And again, the size of the circle is not--
it doesn't correlate necessarily with the mobility aid,
with body sizes, for example.
The minimum size of it when players step on the play field
is bigger than your body and than the average wheelchair.
Thank you so much.
Other questions?
Yes, few rows before.
Hi, I'm Katta Spiel.
I'm with KU Leuven and Universitat Wien.
Congrats to the best paper.
That's well deserved.
Thank you.
But I saw that you mentioned that
a non-disability-specific play setting is
important for inclusive play.
And I would like to just trouble that a little bit, because that
can mean different things.
You were very much on adapters, but I
think you can probably think of options for sharing experiences
in play that might be centered on disabled ways of knowing
and being in the world.
I think it might be a consequence.
We had to boil it down in bullet points,
and maybe that was too simplistic.