Clive Fencott

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A Methodology of Design For Virtual Environments

• Clive Fencott
• SpIDERStudio
• School of Computing
• University of Teesside

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Introduction

• Methodology
• Particularly content modelling
• Integration
• Problems and further research
• SpIDERStudio
• Strange Agency Limited

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Me

• Idle waster
• Poet and performance artist
• Formal Methods
• Methods Integration research
• Virtual Environment Theory
• Entrepreneur

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What is the problem?

• Designing VEs is difficult and time consuming
• Have to reconcile engineering and aesthetics
• Need methods and tools
• Thats why were here

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What is a Method?

• An underlying model
• A language
• A process model
• Heuristics
• (Kronlof, 1993)

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A VE Process Model
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What Underlying Model?

• Turing Machines, Lambda Calculus not expressive
  enough
• Interaction Machines
• Semiotics

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Semiotics

• The study of how people find meaning in the world
  around them
• Signs made up of
• Signifier
• Signified
• Huge body of theory built up from this basic
  insight

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Semiotically Closed Interaction Machines
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What Language do we use?

• UML on the engineering side
• Can Semiotics help us on the aesthetic side?
• Yes, but it needs to be adapted for interaction
• Do they work together?

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• A chair looks like a chair

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Interactive Content

• but it might also be
• Something to stand on
• Something to fight with
• Something to buy and sell
• A symbol of status, a throne for instance
• The meaning paradox
• A chair doesnt function as a chair
• It does function as interactive content

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Content Modelling

• Theories of
• The meanings people make of interactive content
• The types of responses they make as a result
• Has to be
• Multi-levelled
• Multi-faceted

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VE Aesthetics

• Agency
• Intention
• Perceivable Consequence
• Narrative Potential
• Co-presence
• Transformation
• Presence

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The Problem with Agency
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Perceptual Opportunities
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Method
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Now and Future

• Object Aesthetics
• POs as OO attributes of content code
• Agency at the heart of all VR
• Tools dont support the design of agency
• Most tools make implementing agency very
  difficult at best

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SpIDERS

• Semiosphere Interactive Digital Environment
  Research Studio
• Semiosphere
• An ecology of meaning in which differing
  languages and media interact
• Yuri Lotman, a Russian semiotician
• Semiotics
• The study of how humans make meaning out of the
  world around them

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What is SpIDERS?

• An interdisciplinary team of computer scientists,
  experimental psychologists and artists and
  designers
• Conduct research into theories of interactive
  content
• Experimental verification of theories
• Practical research into the nature of interactive
  media applications
• Particularly computer games

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Ethos

• There are many ways of investigating the world
• Empirical science
• Qualitative methods
• Art practice and other humanities based
  approaches
• And so on
• They are all of use

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Experiments

• Predictive content modelling
• Genre theory, aesthetics, perceptual
  opportunities, the semiotics of interaction
• Unrealisms
• Specialised experimental methods
• Mood and presence
• patterns of choice
• VR as object of study

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Methodology

• Specialist technology, e.g.. Eye-tracker
• To correlate focus of attention with observed
  behaviour

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Applications Research

• VR as subject of study
• People with Dementia (PWD)
• The use of Virtual Reality to help PWDs learn new
  environments
• Computer Games for exercise
• Games that respond to exercise bikes etc.
• Computer Games and Older Adults

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• University Spin-out company
• Proof of Content
• The analysis of computer games before they are
  playable

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Conclusions

• Interactive content a major field for research
  and commercialisation
• Content modelling way behind the technology of
  interactive content
• We are still only at the beginning
• Even computer games are in their infancy

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• A Methodology of Design for Virtual
  Environments
• In Developing Future Interactive Systems
• Ed. Sanchez-Segura
• Idea Group
• 2005