I’ve been feeling good the last couple of days now, i.e. my mood is not going up ‘n down. I’ve had two days which “little” work to do, and thus I’ve been able to relax a bit and do nothing really. And just for about an hour ago I got to know that an old friend is coming and visiting us here in Blekinge 
. That’s it for the status report now onto school
I’m currently reading two HCI (Human Computer Interaction) courses in my course, actually we’ve had 4 courses and 3 of them have been about HCI. For the two courses I have now, one is less interesting and one is kinda more interesting and that is HCI in games. We have some different kind of equipment here for us to use.
- Arduino Basically it’s just an interface for creating different components for the computer. It’s easier to describe with examples: Racing cars controlled by radio remote control, game controller, lamps switching on when there is some movement in the room, alarms, etc.
- Eye-tracker Tracks where on the screen you’re looking. This could be integrated with other software, like games, but I think it’s usually used for testing the design of web pages; i.e. if people look where they are supposed etc.
- EMG (electromyograph) Depending on where you place the sensors you can use it for different things. For measuring emotions it’s usually placed on the face, it could also be placed on the arms to control something with the hand just by doing actions in the air.
- GSR (Galvanic Skin Response) Measures the resistance between two points. So what’s that good for? Well it measures how aroused you are, because the more aroused you are the more you’re sweating, thus less resistance. It can be used as a lie detector, but in games it could be used to enhance the game play. Think of a sneaking game and the more aroused (read less calm) the harder it is to hide from enemies; or if it’s a shooter the crosshair could start shaking, and maybe you get paralyzed by some degree in horror games. Although there is some seconds of delay, so this needs to be accounted for.
- EEG (electroencephalograph) Read the mind, well not exactly but measures brain waves. It’s mainly used in hospitals, but in the area of games it is used to control some gaming elements with the help of the mind. It’s not that accurate and needs training before you can use it. Thus it’s like not feasible to have like a whole game only controlled by it, unless it’s a very simple game. Because usually people give more than one command at the same time and differencing pattern could then be hard.
Anyway we’re going to make a simple prototype using one of the equipments here. It’ll be fun to see what we’re able to do and what the others are able to accomplish (we’re three groups of three people). There will be another update when we’re done with the game. Too bad we can’t just share the game and have people test it, for you to use it you’ll need the equipment we use and some of those are kinda expensive.