Computer Games and the Media Equation

The purpose of computer games has always been to get the player to think as if he is actually within the game. From the way that the player on screen responds to the commands thrust at it from the user, each and every game is geared towards this very aim. Not surprising then when looking at the media equation and the way we view computers as social actors in interactions.

The media equation says that humans will see objects either on computer, or part of a game, or even on TV as something human when in fact it is merely a representation of real life. With computer games this is much more apparent as the whole interface is made in a very different way to traditional applications. In a traditional application the user would not expect to see personality on screen and often most users, especially if they are NOT complete novices, see personality like the paper clip in MS Word as being annoying. Nevertheless, the absence of personality and of those personal interactions are seen as strange in a computer game.

Therefore, from a HCI design point of view, I believe different circumstances demand different levels of personality. Whereas a game may demand a complete absorbance of the user into the interface, a word processor would need to be more of a “do what I say” interface where it just performs tasks efficiently. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that the interface of an application is geared towards the required output rather than a blanket good/bad interface requirement. This means that what is good for one application may not be good for another.

Media Equation for Children

The media equation as my colleague has explained below is the way people respond to media in a fundamentally social manner and how they treat computers as social actors in interactions.

However, I will now consider how this affects children in particular. The background to the media equation is that due to our minds not having evolved fast enough to deal with these new concepts, is this true also of children that they react in the same way as adults in dealing with computer interfaces as social actors?

From my research, I have found many interesting findings. The first interesting finding was that children seemed to respond in the same manner regardless of the personality of the computer. Whether the computer praised them for their performance or not they reacted in the same manner. This has some important implications for the design of an interface as it means that it is not as important for it to be as positive as was previously thought. However, this does not mean that it is worthless being positive as the findings did show a very slight level of increase in the level of answers given. On the whole, children’s software currently is presented in a very positive manner regardless of whether the child gets the answer right or wrong. However, from the findings it can be seen that adults seem to be more affected by these things than children do.

However, one significant area that children are more affected by the media equation than adults is where the computer comes across as a team mate. Where the computer made suggestions the children were far more likely to follow the advice and make changes to their answers. Although the finding were not statistically significant they were found to be much more than the way adults responded.

Furthermore, boys were found to be far more influenced than girls in the suggestions the computer made when investigating the effects of team formation.

The implications of these findings are that when designing interfaces for children, they must be set apart from those of adults. Aside from the usual brighter colours and rounded graphics, it is perhaps far more important to design the interface in a friend like manner where the computer takes the child through the software/site/application just as a parent or teacher would in real life.

Moreover, with children, due to the fact that they are usually in the stage of learning and experimentation, then they adapt much quicker to a personality than adults do. Therefore, more care must be taken with design of the way information is sequenced rather than they personality of the computer. Furthermore, presentation is far more important in terms of colour and style as children react more positively to a brighter and more interactive display.

What colors?

Just a quick blog here...mostly off the back of thinking about the Hex game. I was thinking from a usability perspective what colors would be best for games where both players need the colours to stand out when looking at one of them. For example when player 1 is white then looking at the board he/she should see white as being dominant, and for black he/she should see black as dominant.

If anyone bothers reading these blogs please add some comments about what colours are used in the games that you play.

Yellow and Red - Connect 4
Orange and Blue - Make 5

What else is there?


Just to relate this to HCI sometimes you don't want just one section to stick out, but you want the user to not be distracted by other parts of your interface when focusing on one section. That is one of the reasons why scrolling text is very very bad HCI. Yet some sites insist on these java applets which scroll text and flash colors at you. Luckily most sites have moved away from the philosophy that because I can I should.

One idea would be to use the mouse as a pointer to what the user is focusing on and then change other parts of the interface depending on that. For example if I were to hover my pointer over an article on a page with 3 or 4 such posts then the program should recognise this and grey out other areas. This would enhance the focus of the user. However, it could also be very annoying as it would mean that to see something my mouse would constantly have to be in the right place.

Smooth Scrolling

Did u ever get confused on one of them sites where u click on a link and it takes u to the 30th paragraph on a page filled with enough text to be in a government report. Well a cool feature I came across which I believe encapsulates the idea of HCI is a JavaScript function which instead of jumping all the way down....or jumping all the way up, scrolls through until it reaches the section you wanted.

Although not exactly ground breaking, it is a feature that adds those small things to an interface which all add up to a good user experience. From a HCI design perspective, all interfaces need to show the user what is happening rather than just doing things from a functionality point of view. That means that interfaces should include loading bars to inform the user how long it will take to finish the process and other features such as scroll bars that change size depending on how much input there is in the text box.

Click here to view the scroll effect in action

or here to view the actual code for the script

Furthermore, another feature that I saw using JavaScript (can't remember the site now) was that when a user clicked on a text box to type something in, the web page immediately put a red border around the box. In effect its these small features that add to the usability of a site or application.