Workshops – IFIP ICEC 2022

Workshops at the IFIP-ICEC 2022

W1 – Workshop on Social and Ethical Issues in Entertainment Computing
W2 – Workshop on Interactive Immersive Entertainment: VR/XR/AR in Digital Entertainment (WIIE)
W3 – Digital Arts and Health
W4 – Current Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Game-based Learning

Entertainment computing can span anything from a single player game on a mobile device through to large-scale online multiplayer games. This workshop will focus on a range of issues which impact on the design, use and adoption of games from an ethical and social perspective. Issues to be explored will start from the composition of those working in the industry looking at aspects such as diversity and inclusion. From this we will explore how this impacts on game design and how groups are represented within games. We will further explore issues relating to monetization, incentives and potential addiction. We will explore how to design for ethical and social issues while also looking at problems which have arisen and the potential challenges of the future.

We welcome all topics related to ethical and social issues, and some suggestions are provided below:

Guidelines, surveys and methodologies
Diversity and inclusion from an employment, representation and design perspective
Large on-line gaming worlds and location-based games, including augmented reality
Legal and best practices
Impact of social media on gaming
Potential benefits and harm of gaming

Organizers:
Roderick McCall, Johana Riquier, Jo Summers, Celina Kacperski, Jethro Shell

W2 – Workshop on Interactive Immersive Entertainment: VR/XR/AR in Digital Entertainment (WIIE)

This workshop is intended to produce a discussion among researchers, developers, and any one interested in addressing immersive entertainment applications and researches. Although immersive technologies have evolved rapidly, there are many barriers that still affect entertainment industry investments. There are many ways to create innovative applications in an immersive environment. In this workshop, we make a discussion about immersive technologies and future trends of immersive solutions to the entertainment industry, such as immersive films, games, and simulators. We welcome participants that are engaged on Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality and other immersive environments to take part of the Workshop.

The workshop will focus on the following fields:

Virtual Reality (VR)
Mixed Reality (MR)
Extended Reality (XR)
Augmented Reality (AR)
Immersive applications for entertainment, education, industry, health, and scientific domains.
Immersive gamification techniques studies related to immersive devices usability techniques or technologies for preventing cybersickness
Studies of immersive and/or interactive solutions and/or future technologies.

Additionally, topics involving any other disciplines and techniques (such as machine learning, human-computing interaction, and others) tied to the main topics of interest are welcome.

This workshop will also feature a tutorial:

Introduction to Collaborative and Multiuser XR Environments

Duration: 1,5h, Author: Thiago Porcino – Dalhousie University

Collaborative environments in VR are critical scenarios for entertainment, education, and simulation, among others. These solutions enable users to meet up in the same virtual space and communicate through speech and text through their respective avatars, and this is a crucial trend related to Metaverses. This tutorial will introduce how to develop collaborative environments and will show different possible applications.

Tentative Program:
9:30 – 11:00: Tutorial – Development of Collaborative and Multiuser VR Environments
11:00 – 12:00: Panel – The Metaverse and the Digital Entertainment Challenges (panelist to be defined)

Organizers:
Esteban Clua, Universidade Federal Fluminense
Thiago Porcino, Dalhousie University

W3 – Digital Arts and Health

Digital arts refer to artworks that use digital technology as part of the creative or presentation process. Different components of art activities are known to be health-promoting. These components can trigger psychological, physiological, social, and behavioral responses that are linked with health and well-being. The emerging forms of digital arts and new ways of interacting with these arts enable a new area of research and practice in promoting health and well-being. This workshop is intended to bring together researchers, designers, artists, and practitioners involved in the design and use of systems combining digital arts and health to build on an understanding of emerging digital art interventions in health and well-being.

For implementing previous approaches and maximizing potential value digital arts bring to health and well-being worldwide, research papers on (but are not limited to) the following topics are of mutual interest to this workshop:

Explore the mechanisms on how digital art interventions affect health;
Sharing cases of digital arts and health in practice;
Explain where the digital arts can and where they cannot facilitate health;
Sharing knowledge on scaling up the applications of successful digital art interventions.

Workshop participants are invited to submit a full research paper related to “digital arts and health” for peer-review. Papers must be submitted using the Springer LNCS format (see conference requests on the Full Research Papers). All accepted papers (6-8 papers) will be applied to publish in book form in the Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Program:
12:00 – 12:05: Welcome
12:05 – 12:35: Keynote Loe Feijs
12:35 – 13:05: Paper Session 1
13:05 – 13:15: Break
13:15 – 14:00: Paper Session 2
14:00 – 14:15: Break
14:15 – 14:45: Paper Session 3
14:45 – 14:55: Closing

Organizers:
Mengru Xue, International School of Design, Zhejiang University
Cheng Yao, College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University
Jun Hu, Industrial Design Department, Eindhoven University of Technology

W4 – Current Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Game-based Learning

Digital game-based learning (DGBL) has been discussed for more than 50 years. Despite countless studies over several decades, DGBL is still the exception rather than the standard in most educational contexts. For further advancement of DGBL, this workshop will provide an overview of opportunities and challenges of DGBL. The workshop will be based on the method of collaborative brainstorming. The results of the workshop will be elaborated further after the workshop and consolidated into a scientific article that may guide the research community in promoting DGBL.

Organizers:
Jannicke Baalsrud Hauge, BIBA Gaming Lab & KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Heinrich Söbke, Bauhaus-University Weimar
Heiko Duin, BIBA Gaming Lab
Ioana Stefan, ATS
Barbara Göbl, University of Vienna

Interactive Works

A memory of the Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra

Maximilian Rubin, Jorge C. S. Cardoso, and Pedro Martins Carvalho, University of Coimbra

Description
This project consists of the creation of a Virtual Reality experience, based on a memory of the Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra, using point cloud capture and visualisation techniques. The main goal is the creation of an immersive audio-visual experience that will grasp the ambiance of the Botanical Garden along with simulating some of its natural processes. We have developed a Virtual Reality experience for three iconic locations/trees of the Garden: Tilia x europaea, Erythrina Crista-Galli, and the Ficus Macrophylla. Users can experience this immersive point cloud-based environment, navigate between the three locations and subtly interact with some of its natural elements.

VizArt

Rui Wang, Jun Hu, Department of Industrial Design, Eindhoven University of Technology

Description
Nowadays, people often experience physical separation in their daily life.

Especially in their relationships with family, friends, colleagues, and others. This is mainly because more and more young adults have to stay in a city far away from their hometown for education and other personal ambitions. Moreover, due to the pressure and stress from people’s work and study, there is limited time for individuals to connect with their colleagues. Also, technological development, such as the use of various self-service machines and online social media, while bringing convenience to people makes interaction opportunities get fewer and fewer between people in real life.

Because of these separations, the level of social connectedness between people, which is quite important for human well-being, is declining gradually.

VizArt aims to provide a new channel for helping people connect remotely through non-verbal personal information that could naturally integrate into daily context.

SleepHill: Designing an Incrementally Bouncing Pillow as a Comfortable Wake-Up Approach

Wenshu Xun, Pengsong Zhang, Zixuan Liu, Yufei Meng, Yaqi Zheng, Renyao Zou, Xipei Ren, Beijing Institute of Technology

Description
This interactive work will show a design study of SleepHill, an inflatable sleep pillow that can incrementally bounce its body and softly tilt its surface to create a gentle yet efficient haptic alarm for comfortable wake-up. We prototyped SleepHill and conducted a pilot user study to preliminarily understand the resulted user experiences. Our findings revealed that the wake-up process facilitated by SleepHill allowed participants to be gently awakened without being frightened. Also, we learned that the usage of SleepHill could produce improved sleep and wake-up experiences due to its incremental haptic feedback mechanism.

Through Troubled Waters: A Narrative Game for Anger Regulation

Jiaqi Li, Sotirios Piliouras, Semma Raadschelders, Vivian Imani Dap, Claudia Alessandro Libbi, and Marcelo A. Gómez-Maureira, Leiden University

Through Troubled Waters (TTW) is a narrative-based video game that allows players to explore and experiment with different anger coping mechanisms in a playful environment. The game consists of three scenarios featuring 4 strategies for anger coping. The core game mechanics are centered around (i) the introduction of angering events that the player can respond to through storytelling dialogues and (ii) the collection and use of ‘strategy cards’. Through those features, the game aims to support players in recognizing, labeling, and responding to emotions related to anger. TTW has been used as a research instrument in measuring its effect on learning to cope with anger. Findings showed that participants were able to effectively communicate about the anger coping strategies that were presented in the game, reflect on their own strategies and acquire a desire to adjust their current anger coping styles. This indicates the potential future use of storytelling and card features in mental health education and the specific case of learning, reflecting and adjusting our personal emotion regulation system.