Measuring Fun and Interactive Technology: A Workshop of Methods and Metrics
The evaluation of fun is not a new area but it is one that has been found to be both complex and controversial. This workshop is proposed to examine some of our views of fun, to further test the efficacy and validity of different metrics and to gather together academic work that focuses on this area.
Interesting Areas for Study
There are several areas for which further study is particularly required and this workshop particularly encourages contributions that add to the knowledge in these areas:
- Can fun be engineered into an interface?
- Can inspection methods ever predict 'fun in use'?
- To what extent can 'fun in use' metrics be used that do not interfere with the fun experience?
- How variable is fun?
Workshop Format
The workshop will take a full day. In the morning, two contributing speakers will begin with contradictory views in respect of measuring fun to help set the context for the workshop. This will be followed by short presentations (10 mins each) from the participants of the workshop outlining their own perspectives and presenting their results / views. Discussion will then follow and areas for further work will be defined.
After lunch, participants will be presented with considerably differing interfaces that they will then evaluate using three different methods. Once all the evaluations have been completed, the results will be collated and discussed and the participants, who will now be acting as evaluators will come together into three groups with each group collating the results from one of the three different methods.
Discussion in the last hour will focus on the usefulness of the metrics fro the task.
Participation
Participation will be by the submission of one of two artefacts. In order to gather as wide an interest as possible we do not limit participation to only those with a paper to present. Individuals can either submit a paper (4 - 8 pages), or a statement of interest (1 page). The statement of interest should describe why the individual is keen to come along to this workshop, what he or she is doing in this area, and what he or she hopes to learn form the session. Those individuals looking for a platform for their ideas / work are encouraged to submit a paper outlining the work they have done. These will be published in the workshop proceedings.