ContextualInquiry-Group:O
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Team Members
- Sean Carr
- Sean did interviews of some GamesCrafters, did some interface design sketches, graphics, and helped with various sections of the writeup.
- Jason Lee
- Jason did some interviews at Games of Berkeley, typed up user descriptions and interview descriptions for Games of Berkeley, and assisted with parts of the Interface Design section of the writeup.
- Michael Udaltsov
- Michael did interviews with GamesCrafters, wrote up the notes for the paper-based games during the interview, and edited several other sections of the assignment.
- Alexander Wallisch
- Alex did some interviews at Games of Berkeley, typed up task descriptions and analysis and also assisted with parts of the Interface Design section of the writeup.
Users
Our project involves two sets of target user groups: those invovled with the GamesCrafters research group and the average gamer, who simply enjoys playing games. Therefore two interview locations were set up: one at a GamesCrafters meeting, where members of the research group were interviewed, and one at the Games of Berkeley store, where customers were interviewed.
GamesCrafters Interviews
User Group A
We chose a group of two GamesCrafters who were "average" members. Each had been in the group for several semesters and knew the system fairly well and were familiar with most of the games in the system. This level of knowledge is expected in the group. We had them play games using both pen-and-paper as well as with the GAMESMAN interface. We had them play Tic-Tac-Toe (TTT), Dots and Boxes (DnB), and Nim. They knew all three games very well and already had some strategies for TTT and Nim. They represent expert users of both the games themselves and of the GAMESMAN system. They helped show us both the capabilities and limitations of each type of gaming interface.
Games of Berkeley Interviews
User Group X
The first group of users was a man and woman who were found shopping at Games of Berkeley. They seemed to be somewhat well versed in games, as they had been browsing the store for some time before we approached them and were occasional shoppers at the store. Also, they immediately recognized the game that they were asked to play, Dots and Boxes, as they had played it before in their childhood and even recalled some basic strategies involved with the game. The two knew each other and appeared to be in a romantic realtionship. For our research/interview purposes, they represented the casual gamer.
User Group Y
The second group of users found at Games of Berkeley was two men who were also students at UC Berkeley, both engineers. They seemed to be familiar with a wide variety of games, especially since one of them had attended Game Developer’s Conference 2006 and were at the store for quite some time before and after we interviewed them (they were also somewhat frequent visitors of the shop). They also immediately recognized the game that they were asked to play, Nim, and were able to remember some basic strategies they remembered from playing the game at an earlier age. The two have been friends for quite some time. For our research/interview purposes, they represented the somewhat heavier gamer.
User Group Z
The third group of users was another man and woman who were found shopping at Games of Berkeley. Unlike the previous two groups, these two really had no background in playing games and admitted that they rarely, if ever, play games anymore. The man admitted that the only reason he went into the shop was to find some material on origami, and the woman had merely followed him in because they were shopping together. They did not recognize the game that they were asked to play, Tac-Tix, and even had some difficulty in understanding the rules of the game. The two knew each other and appeared to be in a romantic relationship. For our research/interview purposes, they represented the unfrequent gamer.
Problem and Solution Overview
Our project addresses two aspects of playing and analyzing two-player paper-based games such as Tic Tac Toe and Dots And Boxes. If the games are played on paper, they are easily transportable, and can be played in a variety of environments. However, for players who prefer to analyze different strategies, and learn from previous games, paper is not an ideal choice. Once the games are played, it's difficult to recall the order of moves that were performed, since the paper only shows the final state of the game. It may be possible to remember the moves for simpler games such as Tic Tac Toe, but it's especially difficult in the case of Dots And Boxes. An alternative is to use a computer-based system to play the games. One such system is GAMESMAN, a project started by Professor Dan Garcia. It serves as an engine for solving, analyzing, and providing a perfect computer opponent for two player, finite, perfect information games such as Tic Tac Toe, Checkers, and many other games. While it's good for analysis and strategy development, it is often inconvenient, since a computer is required to play the games. There is also a certain learning curve for the GAMESMAN software, which may prevent potential users from using it. The overall problem is to recreate the easier and more user-friendly pen-and-paper interface for paper-based games, while still offering the analytical tools in GAMESMAN. The solution to the problem involves recording and translating the strokes of the pen in such a manner that it is known which game is being played and also what each symbol made by the pen represents. This information can then be sent to the GAMESMAN interface, where analysis can take place. The current list of games we are considering creating interfaces for include Tic-Tac-Toe, Dots and Boxes, Nim, 1 to 10, Iceblocks, Odd or Even, Tac Tix, and Connections! This list will be modified as the project advances and we discover which ones are and aren't feasible.
Contextual Inquiry Interview Descriptions and Results
GamesCrafters Interviews
The interview was conducted on the 7th floor of Soda hall. It began at about 6:20 PM and lasted until 7 PM. There were two people participating in the interview, both from the GamesCrafters research group. They were asked to play games of Tic Tac Toe and Dots And Boxes, first using paper and pen, and then on a laptop using the GAMESMAN system. They also played Nim using the GAMESMAN system. During the games on paper, Sean asked questions and discussed the game with the players, while Michael took notes, and vice versa for the games on the computer.
Games on Paper
Two rounds of Tic Tac Toe were played, with the goal identified as "to win," which is the most commonly played version of Tic Tac Toe. The 3x3 playing fields were drawn quickly and imprecisely in both cases, though the playing positions were still easily distinguishable. One of the players also explained that by convention, X goes first, though the choice for which player that is seemed arbitrary (starting player switched for the second game). Both rounds ended in a tie since both players were experienced playing with optimal moves. It didn't seem to matter who went first, or that the games were started in different positions (first corner, then center). The games were also finished very quickly (within 30 seconds), even though the players had to pass a pen back and forth to mark the moves. It was noted that the simple Tic Tac Toe games only provide a marginal amount of fun, and Dots And Boxes was picked as a more interesting alternative.
There were two rounds of Dots And Boxes, played on the same sheet of paper as the Tic Tac Toe games. One of the players explained the rules, and started by drawing a 5x6 dot pattern for the first game. The first several lines were placed fairly quickly, explained by not needing a lot of strategy until there are 2 or more lines on most squares. The first completed box resulted from an accidental move, possibly because of placing a line before analyzing all alternatives. After this, the game became slower, while both players began considering more careful strategies. Even the game was played from opposite sides of the table, it was noted that viewing perspective doesn't really matter. One of the players was able to fill in half of the game field by following a "chain" of two-line boxes. This was identified as a goal of the game - to make careful moves, and get most boxes in a row, since it usually leads to winning. The final result of the game was 13 for one player (K) and 7 for the other (M). It's interesting to note that after the last turn, player one chose not to fill in the initials, since it was clear that the game was over.
It was decided that since so many marks have to be done by alternating players, it actually slows down, and possibly distracts from the game if players have to share the pen. So another pen was introduced for the second Dots And Boxes game. This game was chosen to be on a 4x7 size. Again it was mentioned that the game requires more thought once most blocks fill in with 2 edges. After a 3rd edge is placed, the next player would get the block and go again. The strategy required players to "trade chunks" - several blocks in a row, and attempt to get the most overall in order to win. In this game, some moves proved to be difficult, requiring as long as 5-10 seconds per turn. One of the explanations is that the board size makes a difference in difficulty. This time player M was able to win with 14 boxes, leaving player K with just 2 boxes. This time all boxes were filled in, though it was done after the game was declared finished. So overall, the two players tied, which shows an approximately equal level of experience at the game.
Games in GAMESMAN
When they first started playing TTT in GAMESMAN it was noticeably slower and harder to play. The users were sharing a laptop and in order to not move it they positioned it facing between the two of them, which made it hard for each of them to see the screen and use the touchpad. The laptop, unlike pen-and-paper, did not lend itself to being passed back and forth, being easily positioned for both to access, or even to tilt back and forth. Also, because the interview was done in the evening, the sun was shining directly through the window, and the blinds could not be closed (turning levers were removed). Because of this, the laptop had to face away from the sun in order for the screen to be visible. This wasn't a problem during the pen-and-paper games since the paper was flat on the table, and it also had a much greater contrast than the laptop screen, so it was easily readable even with direct sunlight hitting it.
With regard to the game of TTT, just like the paper version they new the game well enough to make it trivial. Once they had played a couple quick games they were eager to move on to something more interesting. First they played Dots and Boxes (DnB) but were not able to play on a board as big as they had used for the paper based version (because of deficiencies in the GAMESMAN code) and so this game also did not keep their attention very long.
Then we had them play Nim, and they enjoyed it a lot. Even though each of them knew the “secrets” for how to win, the game was still interesting because it can be “a lot of work to calculate how to win.” They also used another feature of GAMESMAN to make the play more interesting by changing the variant or rules of the game. They tried playing the version of Nim in which the person to pick up the final piece loses. Since they did not know the winning strategy for this variation of the game there was a lot to learn. They were noticeably thinking much more about each move and often giving up on trying to find the optimal move because there were so many possibilities. At this point they started using the Visual Value History (VVH) to learn more about the game. They used it both for direct feedback on moves as well as looking back at who had made more mistakes. Since they were advanced users they already understood the meaning of the various elements of the VVH and were able to extract a fair amount of game specific knowledge from it.
After finishing playing these games we asked them questions about playing with each medium. Even though both of them are active members on the GamesCrafters development team they both said they liked playing the games more on paper. They cited that it was easier to share, quicker, more natural, had no bugs, and was highly portable. They also expressed the benefits of the GAMESMAN system for actually learning how to play a game well using the analysis tools such as value moves and VVH. They appreciated the added value gained by playing the game on the computer and were not nearly ready to give it up for pen-and-paper. They pointed out that the computer is way better for analysis than the human brain trying to analyze a game on paper.
Games of Berkeley Interviews
One of the target user groups that we wished to gather data from was the everyday gamer who enjoyed playing games purely for fun (as opposed to the GamesCrafters group, who also enjoyed researching and analyzing game strategies). Thus, an interview station was set up at the Games of Berkeley store where we asked people to volunteer a small portion of their time to play some games, both on the GAMESMAN system and on pen and paper and answer a few questions that would help us gather some data on how we should design our interface and what users wanted and needed from the application that we are going to design. We hoped to gather a good cross-section of gamers from Games of Berkeley, and thus tried to interview customers who had looked like they had been there for some time and were browsing through the entire store, as these people were more likely to be interested in games and be slightly more serious gamers than most. We gathered three groups of interviewees (two people to a group, as each game typically requires two people to play), and asked each group to play a different game. The first group played Dots and Boxes, the second group played Nim, and the third group played Tac-Tix (a slight variant on Nim).
Interview Process
For each group of interviewees, we first asked them to play a game between each other on the GAMESMAN system, using Alex’s laptop. Giving minimal instructions on how to use the system (besides clarifications on the rules of whatever game they were playing), we asked them to interact with the system and play the game. While playing the game, we asked the users to think aloud about any questions, comments, or concerns they had with the interface of the game and system, as well as whatever they were thinking as far as game strategy was concerned. After that, the customers were then asked to play the same game, but using a pen and a piece of paper instead. They were once again asked to think aloud about how the interface of a pen and paper differed from the interface of the GAMESMAN system. After finishing the game on the pen and paper, we followed up with a series of questions, including which system they preferred using and what advantages and disadvantages they felt each system had over the other system. We also asked them some of the questions found on the task analysis questions page. The purpose of this procedure was to uncover any difficulties that the users had in interacting with the GAMESMAN system and how, if at all, the pen and paper system eliminates these difficulties in the GAMESMAN interface. This data would prove valuable in designing our application, as the purpose of our project is to give users the powerful analysis tools that the VVH (Visual Value History) display in the GAMESMAN system offers, while eliminating the bulky and somewhat confusing interface of GAMESMAN and using the simple pen and paper interface that nearly everyone is used to.
Interview Results
Though each group of interviewers had varying levels of experience with playing games, many of them shared the same thoughts about the differences between the GAMESMAN system and the pen and paper interface. Most people preferred the familiarity of the pen and paper interface, as they had learned how to play many of these games, such as Dots and Boxes, on a piece of paper and they were simply used to it. In addition, because of the simplicity of the pen and paper interface, there was far less room for error, outside of misunderstanding the rules. While using the GAMESMAN system, several users expressed concerns over not remembering whose turn it was after shifting attention away from the computer momentarily to answer some of our questions. In addition, the interface itself did not always make itself clear whose turn it was (for Dots and Boxes, the color of the small cursor determined whose turn it was, while in some other games, a very small text field explained whose turn it was). For the pen and paper system, it was very obvious whose turn it was, as they shared a single pen that was passed back and forth between the users, and the turn was simply determined by whoever was holding the pen at the moment.
An interesting response that we got from the interviews was that some of the users vastly preferred the “neater” interface of the GAMESMAN system to the “sloppier” pen and paper system. The woman from User Group X (who played Dots and Boxes) expressed concerns over the fact that the field of dots was not drawn exactly as a square and that not all of the lines that she and her partner drew were exactly straight or exactly connecting the two dots. She said that she liked the fact that the computer interface allowed for straight lines and exact squares and that it was overall neater than having to draw everything yourself on a piece of paper. An interesting feature of the GAMESMAN interface is that it shows “shadows” of lines between dots that have not been connected to show the user what it would like if they were to click on that particular line (the shadow momentarily fills in when the mouse is hovered over the shadow line and permanently filled in when the user clicks on that line). The woman from User Group X got used to these shadows while playing with the GAMESMAN system and had decided that it was strange to play without them on the piece of paper. In addition, the two men from User Group Y, who were asked to play Nim, preferred the GAMESMAN interface because the Nim stones disappeared from the display when clicked on, and it was easy to tell how many stones were left in play. This is a stark difference from playing it on paper, in which the only choice you really have is to cross out the stones, and it is not as easy to tell at a single glance how many stones are left in play.
Despite some preferences of the GAMESMAN system due to its aesthetic superiority, every one of the users agreed that the pen and paper was superior in terms of portability. Most users said that given the choice between having to pass a computer or a piece of paper and pen between them, they would prefer to pass a piece of paper, especially since most users tended to play these types of games during long trips, such as in an airplane, train, or car, or in class when the lecture started to become boring. In these settings, it would be much simpler to pull out a piece of paper and pen, then a laptop.
Each of the interview groups was also shown the VVH display of GAMESMAN, which basically visualizes the strength of each move by each player and how close to winning each move brought the player. When asked if they would find such a feature helpful, we got a variety of responses. User Group X stated that the system was interesting to play around with and look at, but wasn’t sure if they would seriously use such a system, as they mostly played games simply as a diversion or to pass the time when there was nothing else to do. User Group Y stated that they might consider using the system for a game that they were seriously trying to learn strategies for or became deeply involved in, but otherwise would not have a use for such a system. User Group Z stated that they probably would not ever use such a system, because they did not play games that often at all. Given that these results came from people who simply played games for fun, it may suggest that this target user group may not actually use our application that much, and it would benefit us to instead concentrate on our other target user group, the GamesCrafters research group.
List of Tasks
Start Game - Difficulty: Easy
John is sitting in class listening to his professor drone on and on about various French kings named Louis. He is really bored. He decides to kill time by playing Dots And Boxes with his friend, Bob. He pulls out a sheet of digital paper and the digital pen. John thinks about what size game board he wants to play on, decides that each side will have four dots, and then draws sixteen dots in a four-by-four matrix. While drawing this box, he takes care to avoid drawing a highly distorted square. Once he's done this, he makes the first move and then hands the pen to Bob.
Play Game - Difficulty: Medium
John and Bob begin a game of Dots and Boxes as described above. To play, each player takes turns drawing a line on the page between two dots that are horizontally or vertically adjacent. If a player completes the fourth side of a box, he writes his initials in it and takes another turn. On John's turn, he draws a line between two points and hands the pen to Bob. Bob draws a line and hands it back. It is not essential that these lines be perfectly straight and start and end precisely on the dots, as long as they are reasonably close.
After a few turns, Bob manages to complete a box. He writes his initials in the box. He then holds onto the pen and takes another turn. In Dots And Boxes, when a player completes one box, he tends to complete several at once; therefore, Bob continues completing boxes and filling in his initials for a while before he finally makes another move and hands the pen back to John.
Aside from the requirement that the dots and lines be reasonably clear and distinct, the actions required to play a game are virtually identical to how a pair of players would play a game with normal (non-digital) pen and paper.
Finish/Abort Game - Difficulty: Easy
Towards the end of their game, John realizes that there is no way he will be able to beat Bob. Although the game is two or three turns from completion, no matter what move John makes, he is guaranteed to lose. Since completing the game is pointless for John, he verbally admits defeat and wants to begin a fresh game. He circles the game to show that it is finished and draws a new board elsewhere on the sheet of paper.
Upload Game(s) - Difficulty: Hard
After John loses repeatedly to Bob, class lets out and he goes home. Sitting at his computer at home, he's curious as to how he could have gotten beaten so much, so he decides he'd like to take a look at the games he played in Gamesman. He docks his digital pen and tells it to upload the games he played into Gamesman-readable files. The upload utility parses the data on the pen and then, for each game that John played, it displays a dialog. The dialog shows John an image of the (completed) game and presents him with a drop down list from which he can select the game that he was playing (he selects "Dots And Boxes"), how big the board was (he selects "3 squares x 3 squares"), and any rules variants he was playing with (he selects "none"). He is also prompted for a name of the game file (he enters "BoredInEnglishClass1". He repeats this process for each game that he wants to upload.
One of the games that he and Bob played didn't get read properly by the pen; the dots must have been drawn at a weird angle and the parser couldn't recognize the board. This game is skipped over because it couldn't be read. Also, one of the games that they played just involved them messing around, but wasn't an actual game. John manually chooses to skip over this one and not upload it.
Load into Gamesman - Difficulty: Medium
After John uploads all of the game files, he decides he wants to look at the replay and statistics for the first one he played. He launches Gamesman, selects "Dots And Boxes," and opens up the graphical interface for it. Once inside, he selects "Load game" and an "Open File" dialog appears, much like the ones in every other program out there. He selects "BoredInEnglishClass1" and clicks "Load." The completed game appears in his Gamesman window. He can step back and forward in the game by clicking the "Undo" and "Redo" buttons.
Use Visual Value History - Difficulty: Hard
John uploads a game as described above. He then clicks on the box near the bottom that reads "Show Visual Value History." The left-hand side of the window changes to a graph that shows the progress of the game in terms of who was winning and how many moves away from victory they were. John notices that he began the game in a winning position, but gave it up three moves into the game. He clicks on the dot representing that move in the Visual Value History and the game undoes itself to that position. He then looks at all the legal moves and checks the box that says "Value Moves." At this point, he sees that if he'd made a certain other move, he'd have held onto his winning position; however, the move he made was a losing move and it allowed Bob to get ahead of him.
Task Analysis Questions
Who is going to use our system?
There are two primary classes of users of our system. The first is the members of the GamesCrafters group. These are the developers of the Gamesman system and most of them have a strong interest in playing and analyzing these types of games. The other primary user group for this system is the target users of the Gamesman system, particularly those who would use it as a way to study and learn strategies for games, but would not participate in the development process. This group includes avid games fans, such as one of the interviewees from Games of Berkeley who indicated that he would be interested in being able to watch replays of his games if he was trying to learn them.
What tasks do they now perform?
The current tasks performed depend on whether the user is in GamesCrafters or not. GamesCrafters currently have the ability to play games on a computer. This involves the following sequence of steps:
- User starts up Gamesman application.
- User selects the game they wish to play and chooses "Play Game."
- User selects "New game" and presses OK.
- User enters "Play options menu" and changes player 2 from "Computer" to "Human," then presses OK.
- Both users play the game using the mouse and the Gamesman interface.
- At any point during the game (including after it is completed), users select "Visual Value History" and examine the graph to determine who made strong moves and who did not.
Users who are not in Gamescrafters are currently able to play games on paper. This is very close to the desired interface, but it does not allow any sort of post-game analysis:
- User pulls out pen and paper.
- User draws board.
- Both users play game.
Members of Gamescrafters also frequently play games on pen and paper when a computer is not easily accessible.
What tasks are desired?
GamesCrafters who currently use Gamesman would like the ability to play games on paper. Paper presents a much easier, faster, and more natural way to play a game than having to use the Gamesman interface. Users who currently play games on pen and paper would like the ability to examine their games after the fact. Some of these people are primarily interested in watching replays of their games, while others would like the ability to analyze the quality of their moves to learn strategies for the game.
How are the tasks learned?
GamesCrafters have typically had a great amount of experience with Gamesman. This experience comes from developing features for it, as well as using it to play games against their friends or against the computer. Users of pen-and-paper games generally learned the rules of the game from a friend. Some of the more common games are often taught to the users as young children (Tic-Tac-Toe, for example) while some games are learned later in life.
Where are the tasks performed?
Gamescrafters require a computer to use Gamesman. The two most common locations that these users play games on Gamesman is at home and at Gamescrafters meetings, when there are many laptops with Gamesman running. At other times, there is either no laptop available, or else it is seen as too great a hassle to boot up Gamesman and pass the laptop back and forth.
Pen and paper games are played everywhere. However, many of our interviewees mentioned that they most frequently play games like this in class as a way to kill time when bored. Airplanes were another popular choice, as well as any other place where boredom occurs.
What's the relationship between user & data?
Users who are interested in learning a game view the instances of their game as a learning resource. It is beneficial for them to be able to step through a game move-by-move. Other users are sometimes interested in determining where they messed up, and are sometimes interested in replaying a saved game for the purpose of watching it.
What other tools does the user have?
The Gamesman system is available for users who wish to analyze or replay games. Pen and paper is available for users to play games during class or other times when there is no computer available. There is currently no easy way for users to perform post-analysis of games without using Gamesman, or possibly videotaping or somehow recording the game play for a paper-based game.
How do users communicate with each other?
The most frequent means of communication between users is the passing of a "mover" object back and forth. When one user passes it to the other, it signals that the first user is done with his turn and is now waiting on the other to make a move. The "mover" is an object that is necessary for the user to take a turn; therefore, it is a pen for pen-and-paper games and a mouse for Gamesman games. When the "mover" is sufficiently bulky (for example, if the users are playing using the built-in mouse on a laptop) then it is common for users to leave the "mover" in place but move themselves towards and away from the mover; for example, interviewees at Games of Berkeley who were playing on the Gamesman interface would leave the laptop where it was but step away from it to signal to the other player that it was their turn.
For any communication other than passing the turn, users communicate verbally with each other.
How often are the tasks performed?
These games are most often played as a means of entertaining oneself when bored. Because boredom does not occur frequently, these games are typically played only irregularly.
What are the time constraints on the tasks?
There are typically few time constraints on these games. In fact, because the games are often played as a means of killing time, the longer the task takes, the better. There may, however, occasionally be limitations. For example, a game might be required to complete before the end of class or before the users are required to put up their tray tables in preparation for a plane landing.
What happens when things go wrong?
On catastrophic error (such as a system crash during a Gamesman game or a coffee spill during a paper game) the users forget the game and move on to another. Each game is relatively insignificant so losing data is not a big deal. On pen-and-paper, if a player makes a move out of order or in an illegal place, the game is also lost; however, on Gamesman, the system prevents illegal moves and has an "Undo" feature in case one player moves out of turn. If the players recognize a problem ahead of time (such as confusion about the rules), they can speak verbally to resolve it. If the game is suddenly cut off (for example, the players are required to put up their tray tables in the above example) then the game is usually forgotten.
Interface design
Functionality summary
Our system, while very simple to use, provides functionality that has never existed before. We aim to combine the benefits of playing games on paper with the complex analysis capabilities of the GAMESMAN application. The beauty of our interface is that we do not require the user to change how they play the game on paper. (A minor exception being circling of a finished game, but hopefully we will be able to do away with that once we figure out the capabilities of the Anoto pens.)
The paper-based interface we provide to the user aims to be so flexible and easy to use that someone could successfully use it without even knowing it was not regular paper. Acheiving this would allow us to not disrupt the users current game playing habits in any way. What makes our system so desirable though is what you can now do with the games you have been playing on Anoto paper. We provide a computer based interface for uploading the game data from the pen to the computer. This interface allows the user to select which games they want to upload (probably only the "interesting" games) and specify parameters about the game that will be used by the GAMESMAN software for analyzing. The main parameters will be what game was played, what board size was used, and what rules/variant of the game was played. Hopefully some of these could be detected automatically depending on the capabilities of the Anoto pen.
The upload utility saves the games in a format that can be loaded in to GAMESMAN as if it were originally played in the GAMESMAN system. Once loaded into GAMESMAN the users can see graphically where they made mistakes or good moves using the Visual Value History analysis tool. Users can also undo to a certain point in the game and replay from there seeing what alternate moves were available and what the value (win, lose, tie, draw) of those moves were.
User interface description and sketches
1. The users will begin a game by drawing the board on the Anoto paper using the Anoto pen. There is nothing about this step that is different from how the user woud start a game using normal pen and paper. This aspect of the application is designed to perfectly emulate how users are currently used to starting such games.
2. Users will proceed to play the game according to the rules of the game using the Anoto paper and pen. Once again, there is nothing different from how this is normally done with normal pen and paper. This aspect of the application is designed to perfectly emulate how users are currently used to playing such games.
3. Upon finishing a game, users signify that the game is complete by circling the entire board and game. This stroke is read by the application to signify that the game is over and the user will most likely move on to another game. This can also be done to abort games that are not finished, but do not wish to be finished for whatever reason (outcome of game is inevitable at that point, game is boring, users realize they messed up somewhere, etc.)
4. When stroke data is collected from the pen (for example, when the pen is docked), the user will interact with the interface of the application on computer. The application's interface will allow the user to decide which games to save and which to discard (each game is signified as finished by circling the game). For each game, the interface will also allow the user to decide on certain parameters, such as which game was played (Tic-Tac-Toe, Dots and Boxes, etc.), size of the board, and in some cases, variants on rules. Based on these parameters and the stroke data, the application should be able to recreate the game that was played and save it as a saved game file.
5. The saved game file is opened in the GAMESMAN launcher, which reads in any saved game.
6. Users can use the VVH tools to analyze each move of their game and determine the strength of each move. Users can analyze this data to form game strategies.
Three (3) scenarios of example tasks with sketches
Finish/Abort Game (easy task)
1. Users begin a game (such as Dots and Boxes) and play through it, according to the rules of the game.
2. Upon finishing the game, the user will circle the game to signify that it is finished. The application will read this stroke as a symbol that the game is over. Users can choose to save or discard each game later when uploading data from the pen.
3. In case of an unfinished game, it still can be aborted. Simply circle the game to signify that it is finished. Users can choose to discard this game later when uploading data from the pen.
Load Saved Game
In this scenario the user has already uploaded one or more games from the pen and now wants to load them into GAMESMAN. As shown before the user clicks File -> Open Saved Game. They are then prompted with a file browser window allowing them to choose a game file to load. By default the game files will include the name of the game (either in the filename or by directory) and the date played to make it easier for the user to find the desired file. Once a file is chosen the game specific interface is opened and the moves in the saved file are made. Note that the game does not need to be finished to be loaded into the system. The uses and benefits of the system once the game is loaded are covered above.
Upload Game
In this scenario, the user has finished playing games and wishes to upload them into Gamesman. First, the user opens Gamesman and selects File -> Upload Game. He then is presented with a dialog. For each game on the pen, the user sees an image of the game and selects the name of the game he was playing as well as any variants of that game he was using (including which size board, for games that support multiple board sizes). He may choose "Skip Game" to not upload a particular game instance, and he may choose "Quit" to stop early before all games are uploaded.
Analysis of Approach
Our approach offers the benefits of the GAMESMAN Visual Value History (VVH) analysis tools while at the same time offering the benefits of playing these traditional pen and paper games on pen and paper. The GAMESMAN system offers powerful analysis tools and can help a user analyze the individual moves of the games they played. These tools can help the user formulate and research sound strategies in these games. However, the interface is somewhat bulky, as it requires the users to be in front of a computer in order to play games. On the other hand, the pen and paper interface is advantageous, as it allows ease of portability and also offers the familiarity of the pen and paper that is universal. However, the pen and paper obviously cannot offer any analysis tools, aside from the analytical skills that exist with the users' minds. This is where our system comes in, as it allows users to play games the way they have been for years, while at the same time allowing users to upload their games from paper to the GAMESMAN system and analyze them using VVH.
Our application uses the affordances of pen and paper, particularly the fact that they are lightweight and can be carried around literally anywhere a person goes with extreme ease. This is particularly true of instances where these games are typically played, such as on long trips (airplane, bus, train, boat, etc) or in instances where two people are trying to kill some time between meetings or classes and the only thing they have are some writing utensils. In cases such as these, it is extremely simple for these users to simply whip out a piece of paper and pen (as opposed to a laptop, even one as versatile as a Table PC) and pass the time by playing these simple, but still deep and entertaining games. Our application uses this affordance of the Anoto pen and paper system and allows users to play games the way that they have been for years and years, while at the same time allowing them to upload their finished games to the GAMESMAN system and use it to analyze their game strategy and how well it worked.
Pros of our approach:
• Offers portability of simple pen and paper interface
• Offers powerful analytical tools of GAMESMAN
• Allows users to decide which played games to analyze and which to discard
• Can be expanded to allow many different games to be played
Cons of our approach:
• Some users may prefer aesthetics and neatness of playing a game on a computer
• Users may have difficulty with interface of uploading a game correctly
• Playing a game incorrectly or making some incorrect marks may cause problems with the application
