International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, 2015
Although Domain Analysis (DA) is important for Model Driven Development (MDD), traditional DA met... more Although Domain Analysis (DA) is important for Model Driven Development (MDD), traditional DA methods are demanding and not practical in many situations. When computer games are developed, game design (problem domain) is usually decided in a gradual way within iterations where software prototypes are constructed and playtest are performed. In such a case, it is not practical to fit a heavyweight DA in the highly iterative process. Researchers indicated that vocabularies were expected to automate game design. Such vocabularies can be reused in another form in DA tasks. In this research, the authors developed an ontology and a DA procedure based on it. To evaluate them, theoretical analysis, case studies, and a user acceptance survey were used. The results indicated that the ontology met the general requirement as a domain vocabulary, and it enhanced the DA process in an expected way. Most of external potential users (46 in total) considered the ontology useful and easy to use.
This master thesis presents an approach to make the MOOSES platform more flexible and dynamic. MO... more This master thesis presents an approach to make the MOOSES platform more flexible and dynamic. MOOSES is a platform that allows people to play video games on a large screen using their mobile phones. A server runs the game on the large screen, and mobile phones are used as controllers for the game. The client controller is an application written in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), which has to be downloaded to the mobile phones. The game server communicates with the client controllers through bluetooth. The MOOSES prototype was developed during our depth study at NTNU fall 2006 based on ideas from us and Alf Inge Wang. During the development of the MOOSES framework we encountered some technical limitations that constrained the MOOSES platform. One of these problems was tied to maintenance of the platform which makes adding and removing of games to a bothersome job. Most mobile phones support the J2ME platform, and there has been developed a couple of script solutions that run on top of this platform. Scripts provide for the J2ME application programming interface (API) to be more powerful by elevating the abstraction level. It also makes it easier to provide a domain specific set of instructions, making development easier. The MOOSES prototype requires manipulation of the source code when adding new games. As a consequence of this, a new client has to be distributed to all the users of the system every time new games are added. A more dynamic client will provide for the MOOSES system to be passive in the addition of new games because the games will not interfere directly with the backbone of MOOSES, but are loaded dynamically on runtime. We will also focus on making development of game clients more tailored to the MOOSES concept. When we are using a scripting platform to develop game clients, it will provide an API that is completely tied to the MOOSES platform. Such an API will have both pros and cons. It makes the API easier to follow and provides a better overview, but it constrains the freedom of creativity. We will have a look at different scripting solutions that may replace or stand as an alternative to our current solution for development of game clients. We will also develop a prototype to test the feasibility of such a solution. A client for the game developed in the depth study will be rewritten to suit the scripted client prototype. This client will be tested at our presentation of MOOSES at the Kosmorama film festival 2007 [1]. The content of this thesis is confidential and should not be given or shown to any other person than the external examiner, Alf Inge Wang, Morten Versvik, Sverre Morka or Aleksander Spro without permission granted by Alf Inge Wang, Morten Versvik, Sverre Morka and Aleksander Spro.
Mobile electronic equipment such as laptops, PDAs and mobile phones have the recent years be- com... more Mobile electronic equipment such as laptops, PDAs and mobile phones have the recent years be- come very important tools for managing mobile work more efficient. In this paper we present a case study of such a tool called HandyMan. We have looked at how five Norwegian ...
This paper presents experiences we had from building a workflow tool from scratch using XML techn... more This paper presents experiences we had from building a workflow tool from scratch using XML technology. We will present some strengths found using XML-technology, but also some weaknesses. Although we had to create a simple process modelling language for this workflow tool, the focus of this paper is on experiences on using XML technology to build workflow tools. The experiences we have achieved, should be applicable for all kinds for process modelling languages. The paper consists of three main parts. First, the requirements for the workflow tool is outlined. Then XML technology is explained with some simple examples. The last part of the paper describes experiences we achieved from the experiment and the conclusions we drew from this.
Pervasive games employ pervasive technology like location-based techniques, utilize player contex... more Pervasive games employ pervasive technology like location-based techniques, utilize player context in real world, and thus produce high immersion. In this article we will introduce a pervasive game prototype CityZombie, which is a multiplayer strategic game we developed and tested in Trondheim, Norway. The experience from developing and evaluating CityZombie is presented in this article, which covers both technical and gameplay aspects. CellID as a simple and popular technique shows high feasibility and appropriateness to the game, and social interaction plays a dominate role in attractiveness and enjoyment brought by CityZombie. Our research also reveals that strategic game could be a promising genre of pervasive game, due to its relatively low requirement to platform capabilities.
This paper describes the pervasive game unexceptional.net. Unexceptional.net is a unique pervasiv... more This paper describes the pervasive game unexceptional.net. Unexceptional.net is a unique pervasive game that is story-driven where the story evolves through multiple media channels interacting with the player. The game interacts with the user on a cellphone and a PC, and the game provides unique gaming experience by introducing gameplay elements through comics, web hacks, Blogs, a 3D client, a transaction visualizer, a phone client and an applet client. The paper describes the process of building this game through integrating various open source software and running multiple student projects. Further, the paper reveals challenges in building multi channel pervasive games and identifies how this was solved in the unexceptional.net project. The contribution of this paper is the description of a novel pervasive game and the experiences from designing and implementing this game. Categories and Subject Descriptors
Using mobile P2P to promote spontaneous collaboration Oppgavens tekst: ”Denne oppgaven skal under... more Using mobile P2P to promote spontaneous collaboration Oppgavens tekst: ”Denne oppgaven skal undersøke hvordan spontant samarbeid kan fremmes og støttes ved hjelp av P2P-applikasjoner p˚a tr˚adløse, mobile enheter. Realistiske brukerscenario skal beskrives og analyseres, og et konsept for slik støtte skal utvikles. En prototype skal utvikles som ”proof-of-concept”. Som et ledd i denne utviklingen skal MOWAHS characterisation framework brukes i design-fasen. Prototypen skal testes, og resultater fra denne testingen skal presenteres.”
This chapter describes a requirement analysis framework that may be used as a tool for developing... more This chapter describes a requirement analysis framework that may be used as a tool for developing client-server systems for mobile workers. The framework concerns the initial analysis process for the development of a mobile system starting by describing scenarios of the work of mobile workers and resulting in a description of priorities both non-functional and functional requirements of the end-system. The framework describes a three step requirement process that includes 1) Elicit scenarios, 2) Scenario analysis, and 3) Requirement analysis. These steps will produce outputs that will be used to assess the requirements of the system. The requirement analysis process is described in detail through templates used to produce output and
Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children
This keynote talk focuses on teaching children through innovation and interaction with technology... more This keynote talk focuses on teaching children through innovation and interaction with technology, and the presentation will focus on experiences from two highly successful technological innovations: EduApp4Syria and Kahoot!. EduApp4Syria, was an international innovation competition launched by the Norwegian government with the goal of creating the best game-based learning apps to help Syrian children to learn their mother tongue. The initial competition resulted in 78 bids from companies based in 31 countries. The end results of the competition were two innovative game-based learning apps that have a proven positive effect on learning and psychosocial learning. The second part of the talk will focus on experiences and research on children's interaction with Kahoot!. Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform invented at NTNU which has reached in 2017 70 million monthly active users, and is currently the fastest growing learning brand in the world. You can read more about EduApp4Syria at: http://norad.no/eduapp4syria and more about Kahoot!at: http://kahoot.com.
Most recent released PC and console games offer multiplayer online support where players can comp... more Most recent released PC and console games offer multiplayer online support where players can compete or cooperate in real-time. However, very few games on mobile phones provide multiplayer support other than shared high score lists. This paper describes problems game developers have to face when developing real-time multiplayer games for mobile phones. Typical problems the developer has to deal with are incoherent representation of players' positions, jagged player object movement, missing collision detection between player objects and background, and wrong or missing collision detection between player objects. The paper describes the mobile multiplayer real-time game BrickBlock, which was developed to investigate the performance issues related to multiplayer games played over the wireless networks. Further, we describe our approaches to solve network latency problems in the game, which made the game playable even over networks with high latency.
This paper describes the results of an experiment comparing two game modes in the game-based resp... more This paper describes the results of an experiment comparing two game modes in the game-based response system Quiz-a-tron. The goal of the experiment was to investigate how two different game modes affected the players’ engagement, perceived learning, concentration, motivation, and social experience. In the game mode Reaction, your score depends on how quickly you give one correct answer. In the game mode Completeness, your score depends on how complete you answer is with a score multiplier for giving correct answers in a row. In the experiment, 30 students were randomly chosen. The subjects first played Quiz-a-tron in one game mode, then filled out a questionnaire, and then played the game in the other game mode and filled out the questionnaire comparing both game modes. Half of the subjects started with the Reaction game mode, while the other half started with the Completeness game mode. The results show that both game modes were perceived as fun, engaging, motivating, educational,...
This paper outlines a high-level design of how software agents can be used combined with an exist... more This paper outlines a high-level design of how software agents can be used combined with an existing CAGIS Process Centred Environment to deal with evolution of distributed, fragmented workflow models. Our process centred environment allows process fragments of the same workflow model to be located in workspaces that are geographically distributed. These process fragments can be changed independently in local workspaces causing consistency problems. We propose to use software mobile agents, offering awareness services solving conflicting updates of process fragment. Our solution is illustrated using some scenarios.
This chapter presents the results of a literature survey on the use of game development in softwa... more This chapter presents the results of a literature survey on the use of game development in software engineering (SE) and computer science (CS) education. Games and game development has been used in recent years to increase motivation, engagement and learning, and to promote doing career in software and computers. The authors of this chapter wanted to get a bird’s eye perspective on how game development has been used in the recent years to teach other things than just game development. The literature survey includes research articles from the period 2004 to 2012, and it investigates among other things in what context game development has being used, the subjects and topics taught through game development, and what tools and frameworks being used for game development to learn SE and CS. Further, this chapter includes a description of how game development was used in our software architecture course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the gained experiences from ...
The use of game-based learning in the classroom has become more common in recent years. Many game... more The use of game-based learning in the classroom has become more common in recent years. Many game-based learning tools and platforms are based on a quiz concept where the students can score points if they can choose the correct answer among multiple answers. The article describes an experiment where the game-based student response system Kahoot! was compared to a traditional non-gamified student response system, as well as the usage of paper forms for formative assessment. The goal of the experiment was to investigate whether gamified formative assessments improve the students’ engagement, motivation, enjoyment, concentration, and learning. In the experiment, the three different formative assessment tools/methods were used to review and summarize the same topic in three parallel lectures in an IT introductory course. The first method was to have the students complete a paper quiz, and then review the results afterwards using hand raising. The second method was to use the non-gamifie...
This paper describes results and experiences from designing, implementing and testing a mobile mu... more This paper describes results and experiences from designing, implementing and testing a mobile multiplayer real-time game for mobile phones over mobile networks. The paper reports on network latency and bandwidth measurements from playing the game live over GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and WLAN using both the TCP and the UDP protocol. The results show that the choice of network and protocol has severe impact of what kind of network games that can be played fluently, and what types of multiplayer games that can be played over the various networks. Further, the paper investigates various approaches that can be used in mobile multiplayer network games to minimize issues related to like latency and low bandwidth. Specifically, the paper describes various approaches for how much of the game should run locally on the client and how much should run on the server. The game we designed was named BrickBlock, and was designed to reveal all kinds of implementation issues the developer has to face due to la...
International Journal on Semantic Web and Information Systems, 2015
Although Domain Analysis (DA) is important for Model Driven Development (MDD), traditional DA met... more Although Domain Analysis (DA) is important for Model Driven Development (MDD), traditional DA methods are demanding and not practical in many situations. When computer games are developed, game design (problem domain) is usually decided in a gradual way within iterations where software prototypes are constructed and playtest are performed. In such a case, it is not practical to fit a heavyweight DA in the highly iterative process. Researchers indicated that vocabularies were expected to automate game design. Such vocabularies can be reused in another form in DA tasks. In this research, the authors developed an ontology and a DA procedure based on it. To evaluate them, theoretical analysis, case studies, and a user acceptance survey were used. The results indicated that the ontology met the general requirement as a domain vocabulary, and it enhanced the DA process in an expected way. Most of external potential users (46 in total) considered the ontology useful and easy to use.
This master thesis presents an approach to make the MOOSES platform more flexible and dynamic. MO... more This master thesis presents an approach to make the MOOSES platform more flexible and dynamic. MOOSES is a platform that allows people to play video games on a large screen using their mobile phones. A server runs the game on the large screen, and mobile phones are used as controllers for the game. The client controller is an application written in Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME), which has to be downloaded to the mobile phones. The game server communicates with the client controllers through bluetooth. The MOOSES prototype was developed during our depth study at NTNU fall 2006 based on ideas from us and Alf Inge Wang. During the development of the MOOSES framework we encountered some technical limitations that constrained the MOOSES platform. One of these problems was tied to maintenance of the platform which makes adding and removing of games to a bothersome job. Most mobile phones support the J2ME platform, and there has been developed a couple of script solutions that run on top of this platform. Scripts provide for the J2ME application programming interface (API) to be more powerful by elevating the abstraction level. It also makes it easier to provide a domain specific set of instructions, making development easier. The MOOSES prototype requires manipulation of the source code when adding new games. As a consequence of this, a new client has to be distributed to all the users of the system every time new games are added. A more dynamic client will provide for the MOOSES system to be passive in the addition of new games because the games will not interfere directly with the backbone of MOOSES, but are loaded dynamically on runtime. We will also focus on making development of game clients more tailored to the MOOSES concept. When we are using a scripting platform to develop game clients, it will provide an API that is completely tied to the MOOSES platform. Such an API will have both pros and cons. It makes the API easier to follow and provides a better overview, but it constrains the freedom of creativity. We will have a look at different scripting solutions that may replace or stand as an alternative to our current solution for development of game clients. We will also develop a prototype to test the feasibility of such a solution. A client for the game developed in the depth study will be rewritten to suit the scripted client prototype. This client will be tested at our presentation of MOOSES at the Kosmorama film festival 2007 [1]. The content of this thesis is confidential and should not be given or shown to any other person than the external examiner, Alf Inge Wang, Morten Versvik, Sverre Morka or Aleksander Spro without permission granted by Alf Inge Wang, Morten Versvik, Sverre Morka and Aleksander Spro.
Mobile electronic equipment such as laptops, PDAs and mobile phones have the recent years be- com... more Mobile electronic equipment such as laptops, PDAs and mobile phones have the recent years be- come very important tools for managing mobile work more efficient. In this paper we present a case study of such a tool called HandyMan. We have looked at how five Norwegian ...
This paper presents experiences we had from building a workflow tool from scratch using XML techn... more This paper presents experiences we had from building a workflow tool from scratch using XML technology. We will present some strengths found using XML-technology, but also some weaknesses. Although we had to create a simple process modelling language for this workflow tool, the focus of this paper is on experiences on using XML technology to build workflow tools. The experiences we have achieved, should be applicable for all kinds for process modelling languages. The paper consists of three main parts. First, the requirements for the workflow tool is outlined. Then XML technology is explained with some simple examples. The last part of the paper describes experiences we achieved from the experiment and the conclusions we drew from this.
Pervasive games employ pervasive technology like location-based techniques, utilize player contex... more Pervasive games employ pervasive technology like location-based techniques, utilize player context in real world, and thus produce high immersion. In this article we will introduce a pervasive game prototype CityZombie, which is a multiplayer strategic game we developed and tested in Trondheim, Norway. The experience from developing and evaluating CityZombie is presented in this article, which covers both technical and gameplay aspects. CellID as a simple and popular technique shows high feasibility and appropriateness to the game, and social interaction plays a dominate role in attractiveness and enjoyment brought by CityZombie. Our research also reveals that strategic game could be a promising genre of pervasive game, due to its relatively low requirement to platform capabilities.
This paper describes the pervasive game unexceptional.net. Unexceptional.net is a unique pervasiv... more This paper describes the pervasive game unexceptional.net. Unexceptional.net is a unique pervasive game that is story-driven where the story evolves through multiple media channels interacting with the player. The game interacts with the user on a cellphone and a PC, and the game provides unique gaming experience by introducing gameplay elements through comics, web hacks, Blogs, a 3D client, a transaction visualizer, a phone client and an applet client. The paper describes the process of building this game through integrating various open source software and running multiple student projects. Further, the paper reveals challenges in building multi channel pervasive games and identifies how this was solved in the unexceptional.net project. The contribution of this paper is the description of a novel pervasive game and the experiences from designing and implementing this game. Categories and Subject Descriptors
Using mobile P2P to promote spontaneous collaboration Oppgavens tekst: ”Denne oppgaven skal under... more Using mobile P2P to promote spontaneous collaboration Oppgavens tekst: ”Denne oppgaven skal undersøke hvordan spontant samarbeid kan fremmes og støttes ved hjelp av P2P-applikasjoner p˚a tr˚adløse, mobile enheter. Realistiske brukerscenario skal beskrives og analyseres, og et konsept for slik støtte skal utvikles. En prototype skal utvikles som ”proof-of-concept”. Som et ledd i denne utviklingen skal MOWAHS characterisation framework brukes i design-fasen. Prototypen skal testes, og resultater fra denne testingen skal presenteres.”
This chapter describes a requirement analysis framework that may be used as a tool for developing... more This chapter describes a requirement analysis framework that may be used as a tool for developing client-server systems for mobile workers. The framework concerns the initial analysis process for the development of a mobile system starting by describing scenarios of the work of mobile workers and resulting in a description of priorities both non-functional and functional requirements of the end-system. The framework describes a three step requirement process that includes 1) Elicit scenarios, 2) Scenario analysis, and 3) Requirement analysis. These steps will produce outputs that will be used to assess the requirements of the system. The requirement analysis process is described in detail through templates used to produce output and
Proceedings of the 17th ACM Conference on Interaction Design and Children
This keynote talk focuses on teaching children through innovation and interaction with technology... more This keynote talk focuses on teaching children through innovation and interaction with technology, and the presentation will focus on experiences from two highly successful technological innovations: EduApp4Syria and Kahoot!. EduApp4Syria, was an international innovation competition launched by the Norwegian government with the goal of creating the best game-based learning apps to help Syrian children to learn their mother tongue. The initial competition resulted in 78 bids from companies based in 31 countries. The end results of the competition were two innovative game-based learning apps that have a proven positive effect on learning and psychosocial learning. The second part of the talk will focus on experiences and research on children's interaction with Kahoot!. Kahoot! is a game-based learning platform invented at NTNU which has reached in 2017 70 million monthly active users, and is currently the fastest growing learning brand in the world. You can read more about EduApp4Syria at: http://norad.no/eduapp4syria and more about Kahoot!at: http://kahoot.com.
Most recent released PC and console games offer multiplayer online support where players can comp... more Most recent released PC and console games offer multiplayer online support where players can compete or cooperate in real-time. However, very few games on mobile phones provide multiplayer support other than shared high score lists. This paper describes problems game developers have to face when developing real-time multiplayer games for mobile phones. Typical problems the developer has to deal with are incoherent representation of players' positions, jagged player object movement, missing collision detection between player objects and background, and wrong or missing collision detection between player objects. The paper describes the mobile multiplayer real-time game BrickBlock, which was developed to investigate the performance issues related to multiplayer games played over the wireless networks. Further, we describe our approaches to solve network latency problems in the game, which made the game playable even over networks with high latency.
This paper describes the results of an experiment comparing two game modes in the game-based resp... more This paper describes the results of an experiment comparing two game modes in the game-based response system Quiz-a-tron. The goal of the experiment was to investigate how two different game modes affected the players’ engagement, perceived learning, concentration, motivation, and social experience. In the game mode Reaction, your score depends on how quickly you give one correct answer. In the game mode Completeness, your score depends on how complete you answer is with a score multiplier for giving correct answers in a row. In the experiment, 30 students were randomly chosen. The subjects first played Quiz-a-tron in one game mode, then filled out a questionnaire, and then played the game in the other game mode and filled out the questionnaire comparing both game modes. Half of the subjects started with the Reaction game mode, while the other half started with the Completeness game mode. The results show that both game modes were perceived as fun, engaging, motivating, educational,...
This paper outlines a high-level design of how software agents can be used combined with an exist... more This paper outlines a high-level design of how software agents can be used combined with an existing CAGIS Process Centred Environment to deal with evolution of distributed, fragmented workflow models. Our process centred environment allows process fragments of the same workflow model to be located in workspaces that are geographically distributed. These process fragments can be changed independently in local workspaces causing consistency problems. We propose to use software mobile agents, offering awareness services solving conflicting updates of process fragment. Our solution is illustrated using some scenarios.
This chapter presents the results of a literature survey on the use of game development in softwa... more This chapter presents the results of a literature survey on the use of game development in software engineering (SE) and computer science (CS) education. Games and game development has been used in recent years to increase motivation, engagement and learning, and to promote doing career in software and computers. The authors of this chapter wanted to get a bird’s eye perspective on how game development has been used in the recent years to teach other things than just game development. The literature survey includes research articles from the period 2004 to 2012, and it investigates among other things in what context game development has being used, the subjects and topics taught through game development, and what tools and frameworks being used for game development to learn SE and CS. Further, this chapter includes a description of how game development was used in our software architecture course at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and the gained experiences from ...
The use of game-based learning in the classroom has become more common in recent years. Many game... more The use of game-based learning in the classroom has become more common in recent years. Many game-based learning tools and platforms are based on a quiz concept where the students can score points if they can choose the correct answer among multiple answers. The article describes an experiment where the game-based student response system Kahoot! was compared to a traditional non-gamified student response system, as well as the usage of paper forms for formative assessment. The goal of the experiment was to investigate whether gamified formative assessments improve the students’ engagement, motivation, enjoyment, concentration, and learning. In the experiment, the three different formative assessment tools/methods were used to review and summarize the same topic in three parallel lectures in an IT introductory course. The first method was to have the students complete a paper quiz, and then review the results afterwards using hand raising. The second method was to use the non-gamifie...
This paper describes results and experiences from designing, implementing and testing a mobile mu... more This paper describes results and experiences from designing, implementing and testing a mobile multiplayer real-time game for mobile phones over mobile networks. The paper reports on network latency and bandwidth measurements from playing the game live over GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and WLAN using both the TCP and the UDP protocol. The results show that the choice of network and protocol has severe impact of what kind of network games that can be played fluently, and what types of multiplayer games that can be played over the various networks. Further, the paper investigates various approaches that can be used in mobile multiplayer network games to minimize issues related to like latency and low bandwidth. Specifically, the paper describes various approaches for how much of the game should run locally on the client and how much should run on the server. The game we designed was named BrickBlock, and was designed to reveal all kinds of implementation issues the developer has to face due to la...
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Papers by Alf Inge Wang