Fluid annotations in an open world
Proceedings of the 12th ACM conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia
Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction
StressCam: non-contact measurement of users' emotional states through thermal imaging
CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Do physiological data relate to traditional usability indexes?
OZCHI '05 Proceedings of the 17th Australia conference on Computer-Human Interaction: Citizens Online: Considerations for Today and the Future
Imaging Facial Physiology for the Detection of Deceit
International Journal of Computer Vision
Spatial Presence and Emotions during Video Game Playing: Does It Matter with Whom You Play?
Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments
Using heart rate to control an interactive game
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Computer Vision and Image Understanding
Interacting with human physiology
Computer Vision and Image Understanding
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
The Segmentation of the Supraorbital Vessels in Thermal Imagery
AVSS '08 Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE Fifth International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance
Detecting stress during real-world driving tasks using physiological sensors
IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems
O job can you return my mojo: improving human engagement and enjoyment in routine activities
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A novel method to monitor driver's distractions
CHI '10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Emnet: satisfying the individual user through empathic home networks
INFOCOM'10 Proceedings of the 29th conference on Information communications
PADS: enhancing gaming experience using profile-based adaptive difficulty system
Proceedings of the 5th ACM SIGGRAPH Symposium on Video Games
HeatWave: thermal imaging for surface user interaction
Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
HeatProbe: a thermal-based power meter for accounting disaggregated electricity usage
Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing
Prediction of affective states through non-invasive thermal camera and EMG recordings
ACII'11 Proceedings of the 4th international conference on Affective computing and intelligent interaction - Volume Part II
Towards designing for competence and engagement in serious games
SGDA'12 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Serious Games Development and Applications
| Hi-index | 0.01 |
One of the major challenges of video game design is to have appropriate difficulty levels for users in order to maximize the entertainment value of the game. Game players may lose interests if a game is either too easy or too difficult. This paper presents a novel methodology to improve user's experience in computer games by automatically adjusting the level of the game difficulty. The difficulty level is computed from measurements of the facial physiology of the players at a distance. The measurements are based on the assumption that the players' performance during the game-playing session alters blood flow in the supraorbital region, which is an indirect measurement of increased mental activities. This alters heat dissipation, which can be monitored in a contact-free manner through a thermal imaging-based stress monitoring and analysis system, known as StressCam. In this work, we investigated on two primary objectives: (1) the feasibility of utilizing the facial physiology in automatically adjusting the difficulty level of the game and (2) the capability of the automatic difficulty level adjustment in improving game players' experience. We employed and extended a XNA video game for this study, and performed an in-depth, comparative usability evaluation on it. Our results show that the automatic difficulty adjustable system successfully maintains game players' interests and substantially outperforms traditional fixed-difficulty mode games. Although a number of issues of this preliminary study remain to be investigated further, this research opens a new direction that utilizes non-contact stress measurements for monitoring and further enhancing a variety of user-centric, interactive entertainment activities.