No idle hands here.

Greetings from Vancouver! Naturally, much has transpired between the last entry about CERN to the present... although I will be in Europe again in 3 weeks.

In the meantime, I have been answering these questions.

What did you do?
Why did you do it?
What happened?
What do the results mean in theory?
What do the results mean in practice?
What is the key benefit for the readers?
What remains unsolved?

More soon!

GDC Canada 2009 Event Round-up

Here's a summary on Gamasutra of the first annual Game Developers Conference Canada, which took place last week here in Vancouver, May 12-13.

There was a general focus on higher-budget games for the first GDC Canada -- reflecting the output of many Vancouver-area developers like EA Canada, Relic Entertainment, Next Level Games, and Radical Entertainment, all of whom had representatives at the show.

2009 GDC Canada's relatively small size gave it an intimate feel, although the keynotes by Don Mattrick of Microsoft and Drs. Greg Zeschuk and Ray Muzyka of BioWare saw fully-packed rooms.

There also are links to all of Gamasutra's session coverage from the two days of GDC Canada, including both keynote addresses:

• Microsoft's Mattrick Talks Distinctive Days, Pioneer Spirit
• BioWare Bosses Talk The Future Of Storytelling
• Next Level's Tronsgard On The Anti-Crunch Manifesto
• Rogers On Determining Studio Value To Publishers
• EA Montreal's Schneider Gets Disruptive On Army Of Two
• What Game Developers Should Know About Windows 7
• Researcher Chandler Talks Creating Emotion, Belief

via the Serious Games Source.

Dangers, opportunities, and non-crises

Well, here we are on a -very- rainy stretch of weather in Vancouver, in June. I shall break my blogger-silence by recounting the last little while... because I know some of you don't follow my myriad posts on Facebook which lately, I've been favouring because they seem to take much less time to do.

Last week, I was chairing the Contexts of Play session at the CGSA (Canadian Games Studies Association) conference and presenting a mobilization of McLuhan at the CCA (Canadian Communication Association) conference at UBC as part of the annual FedCan Congress.

Every year, the Congress brings to its host city of the year a large hit of intellectual talent from across Canada and around the world as a side effect and pleasant coincidence. For example, many key people from research organizations and government were able to meet us at CPROST last week for a morning workshop to talk about our projects, namely on the effectiveness of formal research networks. Colleague Darryl Cressman was able to give a standout presentation on some work he has done on Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as a methodology that may help shed some light on our research topic.

As some of you may know, being the host city of a conference in which one is a participant is particularly draining because the whole point of travelling -away- to a certain place is to be more or less devoted to the event convening all those involved. When you're the local, you're in town, still available to your everyday obligations, and still fully participating. Vancouver has had a lot of those for me lately, cuz like, it's 'teh happeningest'. I was utterly beat, but going on adrenaline. On Thursday I came home and slept, not bothering with dinner. It was that kinda week. That was alright though, because on Friday it was another day and I presented my paper at UBC in the morning, and headed downtown to SFU Vancouver for the afternoon where the ACT Lab (and visitors) had a great roundtable with Darin Barney, the Canada Research Chair in Technology and Citizenship. He is a native of Vancouver and alumnus of SFU as well. A great end to my experience of Congress in Vancouver this year, and next year I look forward to all us social sciences and humanities peepz being in Ottawa for the next annual meeting.

Saturday, I caught up on errands (and you thought I had hired help, right?:) and watched Life of Brian with the spouse in a brain dead sleepy state. Sunday was my sister-in-law's potluck picnic pre-baby celebration, and now it's Monday.... and trust me the month is only beginning to get interesting with more projects and talks and that big panda in the room regarding the completion of something that starts with "pro" and ends with "posal".

Oh, and getting back to the title of this entry... we often hear in innovation talks that the Chinese character for Crisis is composed of the characters for "Danger" and "Opportunity." Not true, as you can read here. A longstanding myth in the management literature, apparently.

Explosion in Vancouver

Some urban Vancouver news: An explosion in the wee hours of this morning happened in my old neighbourhood near Cambie and Broadway. I basically lived right behind the Starbucks in question...and I am thankful that I wasn't there last night.

Read the CBC article>>

Some flickr photos of it here>>

AoIR 8.0 a huge success

The 8th annual meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers (“AoIR”) has just wrapped up in Vancouver. It was, by all accounts, an enormous success, despite the heavy rain that kept people indoors.

Sponsored in part by Simon Fraser University, University of Washington, and the University of Southern California, as well as Microsoft Research, Linden Labs, and Joi Ito Lab, the conference ran from October 17 to 20th at SFU’s downtown campus.

Over 300 delegates from 29 countries participated, and over 240 papers were presented in up to 9 parallel sessions on the 3 main conference days (Thursday, Friday, and Saturday). Keynote speakers included John Lester (LindenLabs, Boston), Henry Jenkins (MIT) and John Willinsky (Stanford).

Read the summary on the School of Communication's blog here>>

Delicious, flickr... searches all apply. There's lots.
As Borat would say, "Great SUCCESS!"

Internet Researchers descend on Vancouver for AOIR 8.0 Let's Play

Here at SFU Vancouver, we are proud to host the Association of Internet Researchers annual conference starting TOMORROW October 17, and going until the 20th. As part of the ground committee (organized by fearless Conference Chair Richard Smith) I can say that we've got a great event lined up and we're looking forward to welcoming y'all to share ideas with leading movers and shakers in the field. Just take a look at the awesome lineup of keynote speakers: Henry Jenkins (MIT), John Lester aka Pathfinder Linden (Linden Lab), and John Willinsky (UBC).

The conference website with information on the program, abstracts, and presenters is here. Too numerous and high quality to name them all here, so you'll just have to see for yourself.

The wiki of goings ons is here. What would we do without them.

There is, of course, a Facebook group -- just search under AoIR... and pie...

The abstract of my presentation on the Korean online games industry with Dal Yong Jin is here. Please do come. It's going to be a smashing panel with Lisa Nakamura (UIUC), Dan Burk (UMinnesota Law School), Sal Humphreys (Queensland UT), and Sara Grimes(SFU). It's on Friday, October 19th in theatre HC 1900 at Harbour Centre, 1:30.

Let's Play. Come and say hi. I'll be making sure there's still cream for coffee and the like.

Serious Games - a UK connection

Yesterday I attended a seminar by Professor Robert Stone from the University of Birmingham on his definition of Serious Games in the UK. The talk was organized by New Media BC, UK Trade & Investment, and The British Midlands. Vancouver was their last stop after having presented in Boston and Montreal this past week.

Recent UK serious gaming case studies have delivered successful proof-of-concept demonstrators to a variety of stakeholders, illustrating the value of incorporating human-centred knowledge into the early project design stages. These results are applicable regardless of whether the demonstrators are based on traditional gaming concepts (preserving the quest for entertainment and engagement), or on the straightforward exploitation of the quality and functionality of games engines and software development kits for contemporary interactive 3D applications (such as part-task training).

Professor Stone took us through why the original "VR" was unsuccessful (think the huge goggles and people shooting from a cabled "gun") because of certain things like 'dotcom mentality', but as he highlighted most importantly, that "most developers forgot the human user."

He also talked about how it is not the technology, but the content that immerses and used some video footage of his son playing CounterStrike and "peeking" around corners, thoroughly immersed. That is, his son did not need to be in a VR chamber, but just a simple computer interface with compelling content sufficed to create an environment in which his son was throughly immersed (so much so, he did not notice Prof. Stone videotaping him or commenting on his play). heh.

Prof. Stone went on to show us how his grad students in their 'spare time' were using game engines like that of the Far Cry "Cry engine" to attempt prototypes for different types of 'serious games' like those that address trauma medicine, military applications where a simulation/game would be useful (like explosive ordinance vehicles), and post traumatic stress.

There was also the case where he had the chance to shoot a minigun and learn that there's a delay from pressing the button, to shooting... and the resultant kickback that one must recover from. So, user factors like this must be accounted for when creating a simulation.

In the question period, asked him to discuss instances of 'user engagement' in his study, and he talked about spending 3 days in a Johanesburg morgue observing how autopsies are done, along with the minigun example. Given his examples which ideally take into account environmental and cultural factors, I would really like to see his future research staff include people focusing on even more user informed inquiry, possibly from the fields of sociology, anthropology, urban studies, and cultural studies (being Birmingham, and all.).

This seminar certainly got the imagination going. A good chance to see what is happening in the serious games research end, and afterwards hear about the governmental support provided by the British Midlands (things like, "if you need research done on how to locate your company here, it's our job to help you." :).

Conference April-Mayhem

I am calling the last two weeks my Conference April-Mayhem of 2007. Between Research Assistantship duties and my own dissertation research to-do's, it's been an extremely stimulating (and exhausting) time. Given the three conferences that I briefly talk about in this entry, it's hard not to be 'thinking of the world.'

Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Conference International Conference and Trade Show Vancouver

Wearing my RA hat from April 29-May 1st, I combed the trade show floor and interviewed international delegates. Primarily, I was in charge of talking to the companies from Denmark. The Danish government, as part of their CanDan initiative, sent a 25+ person delegation in order to make connections and foster deeper relationships with research institutions and industry here, as well as with delegates from around the world.

Of interest was the re-announcement of what the provincial government calls the Hydrogen Highway. Premier Gordon Campbell is working with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to make a hydrogen-friendly path from "BC to BC" (British Columbia to Baja California). During the conference I learned what people were working on in terms of hydrogen vehicles (like bicycles, cars, trucks, buses) and the challenges of implementing those technologies.

Innovation Systems Research Network ISRN 2007 Conference in Vancouver

Directly related to my participation in the H2FC conference the days before, from May 2-5th, I was a graduate research assistant for the ISRN conference, where we discussed the local contexts of innovation (like Fuel Cells). The network is at the very beginning of a very ambitious data collection endeavour that spans the country.

The Innovations Systems Research Network (ISRN) is a network of researchers examining innovation in various cities and regions across Canada. The members of the network are loosely associated with four sub-networks: in Atlantic Canada, Quebec, Ontario and Western Canada. The ISRN's goal is to better understand how economic, social, and political conditions influence innovation and hence economic development at the local, regional, and national level. The knowledge resulting from this research is intended to assist policy-makers at all three levels of government to better understand innovation dynamics and craft more effective policy.

Online Game Development Conference, Seattle

This past week I was shaking things up in Seattle at the OGDC 2007 conference. It was an information-packed two days, which included prominent speakers in the game industry and exhibitions. I felt very privileged to be there, as it gave me a chance to learn about the most current and specific struggles of people involved in the production of games. I found myself drawing tiny crowds during lunch and break times when those around me heard that I conduct research on Korean online game communities. After all, people were curious who this gal with the VIP badge was! The intimacy of the conference allowed for the making of friends, with the approach of quality versus quantity. Way cool.

After the conference, Lisa Galarneau and I hung out (she and her Microsoft Games Studio User Research panel got some press coverage). Being kindred spirits as well as ethnographers interested in games research, we had lots to talk about. She was kind enough to give me a tour of her workplace at the MGS Millennium campus, along with showing me the not so touristy areas of I-5 Microsoft land. Btw, I'm way better at MMOGs than driving games :P

So that was the coles notes of what went on... And now I'm back in Vancouver, defragging, working on papers, getting my shiat together for comprehensive exams so life can move on...
Photos of the conference April-Mayhem can be found in order of activity on my flickr set.

User experience research and such

Last week at Nokia, I presented some findings on the user experience research we did through mobilemuse.ca using N80 mobile devices and the Metrocode application for the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale cell phone tour. The audience was very N-Gage-ing (sorry, couldn't resist), were a great bunch, and asked a number of really good and interesting questions.
Some that I'd like to share here were oldies but goodies that qualitative researchers like myself often encounter in quantitative-oriented audiences on a regular basis, like:

1. How is this research representative, given such a small sample size (like, say n=30 versus 1000)? Short answer: Qualitative research often doesn't claim to be representative. Rather, the objectives of this type of research are to spur inquiry, inspire, and give examples of 'exceptions to the rules.' Example: wheelchair ramps, though made for a 'select' group, are ultimately good for everybody so designing for that is a good thing. Besides, if random large samples and their quantitative analyses were the be all and end all, wouldn't we know everything we need to know by now? Ultimately, in this type of research, randomness, generalizability, and largeness of sample size would not have helped.
   
2. Isn't this research biased? Short answer: glad you asked. The cheeky answer would be to say that all research is inherently biased and qualitative researchers just acknowledge those biases more...? Um... the not so cheeky answer is yes, research absolutely needs to be evaluated and considered amidst its funders and standpoint epistemologies of all participants, especially the researchers. In this research, I personally know that I designed the project with certain 'controls'. For example, instead of using just Nokia products, we had some focus groups that used their own mobile phones.
   
3. Vancouver is a specific test-case, as are your general participant demographic of twenty-somethings. Isn't this too specific? Short answer: This is a similar concern to #2, and #1. The plain truth of the matter is that we're not after generalized data in this type of research. The types of insights generated by focusing on very specific cases is to be able to better observe and articulate contingencies in product/service design plans that might not have been accounted for (which happens all too often). Why is Vancouver different from Seoul? SHOULD we design technologies geared at a generalized average or disregard one 'fringe' group altogether? Probably not.

I think that once these differences in types of research are generally understood for their respective strengths, they are used in amazing ways to improve things. Grant McCracken writes about just such strategies used by Nokia here. I'm optimistic.
My blog on the Biennale's latest appearance in the news, including links to related discussions on the research by team members is here.