Fragile Eggs gets CPHS approval
Fragile Eggs, a game to study the development and ‘trainability’ of the foundational visual-spatial cognitive skill of mental rotation, just received approval for “Human Subjects” testing by Berkeley’s Committee for Protection of Human Subjects (CPHS). This important step ensures protection of the rights and welfare of research participants playing our games. While it seems obvious that playing a game is not generally a high-risk activity, we are collecting very detailed records of how each person plays, which is considered private information. Therefore, as researchers, we take on the considerable responsibility of making sure that these records do not compromise the identity of or disadvantage a participant in our studies at any point. Recently, the New York Times published this article about how little thought is given to the issue of personal information in commercial games, especially for children. Game records describe, down to the millisecond, how fast and accurate a player’s mind is, and how a player solves problems. This data could be very interesting for employers and government agencies, as it provides a functional x-rays of how a person’s mind works. I have long advocated for people to include their game history in their CV’s, but there is a big difference between a person divulging their own records and these private records being collected and resold by third parties. Gamers, own your stats!
Back to Fragile Eggs: the objective of the game is to improve mental rotation in players. Andie Hshieh made amazing graphics for the game, and Li Chen Han programmed a smooth and beautiful game mechanic for the IPad. Faraz Farzin, the Chief Scientist at the Social Apps Lab, ensured that the game is relevant in terms of cognitive development. In January we’re starting playtests with volunteers at the Berkeley School to establish the typical base-line performance of mental rotation in our game.
Social Apps Lab Alumni Making a Mark
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Scotty Hoag, who programmed PokerWalk and several other games at Social Apps Lab in the early days (around 2010) now works for WayForward Inc. where he programmed the Nintendo 3D title Carnival of Friends. What joy to see your work in a box on a shelf ready to sell, and to thereby participate in the material discourse of our culture. We’re very pround of him and all Social Apps Labs Alumni making people play. Courtney Chan, who raised the visual profile of the Social Apps Lab with her executive, design and marketing brilliance, is active in the intersection of High Tech and Fashion. Congratulations and best wishes to all Social Apps Lab Alumni for 2013.
Do Simulations Engage Anticipatory Cultures?
AirQuest is a civic action game for teens addressing air quality topics in California’s Central Valley, specifically asthma and other health conditions triggered by pollution. By raising awareness of factors contributing to poor air quality and their link to health outcomes, players are able to change their self-perceptions from victim to agent of change and air quality superhero. Developed in collaboration with students at Fresno High School, AirQuest renders aspects of the students’ local, lived experiences. In that sense, AirQuest is a game about Fresno with Fresno High Students and deserves the label “Made in Fresno”.
The current version of our AirQuest game shows how dynamic visualizations of pollution distribution models influence gameplay. Each of the game missions are located in areas affected by pollution. The more a location is polluted at a given moment, the harder the game will be to play.
The AirQuest game represents a remarkable level of collaboration not only within the University of California system, but also externally, among academic research centers and local San Joaquin Valley communities, administrators, educators, and organizations.
Though the game is primarily developed through UC Berkeley’s Social Apps Lab and the Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM), our climate modeling experts work at both UC Merced and UC Berkeley, and our game design programmer is from UC Santa Cruz. Our primary support comes from the multi-campus Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS).
Beyond the UC system, AirQuest is fundamentally about collaboration between game producers and community partners. Our community partners act as end users who help customize specific features in the game’s design. For example, interviews with Fresno High School students show that students are often lonely because their friends have moved away due to air quality issues. While many of the community members we have spoken to do not see eye to eye on air quality, they do see a clear benefit in a game that lays out the dynamics of air.
To date, we have actively co-designed AirQuest with Fresno High School teacher Karl Kaku and his students. We have also met with representatives from the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District, Covanta Energy, Fresno Metro Ministry, Central Valley Air Quality Coalition, the Central California Health Policy Institute (CSU Fresno) and the Try More Raisin Cooperative, as well as medical practitioners from United Health Centers and Clinica Sierra Vista to research the background for the game.
Prospective partnerships (in progress) include the UC Berkeley School of Public Health studies FACES & CHAPS (Children’s Health and Air Pollution Study) in San Joaquin Valley, the Center for Regional Change and Oakland’s Youth Radio.
About the Berkeley Center for New Media:
The Berkeley Center for New Media (BCNM) is a focal point for research and teaching about new media, led by a highly trans-disciplinary community of 120 affiliated faculty, advisors, and scholars, from 35 UC Berkeley departments. The BCNM is located at a global center for design and information technology and based in a public research university known for alternative thinking. Its mission is to critically analyze and help shape developments in new media from cross-disciplinary and global perspectives that emphasize humanities and the public interest. BCNM catalyzes research, educates future leaders, and facilitates public discourse through courses, lectures, symposia, and special events. By reaching out to students, researchers, industry figures, and the broader public, BCNM stimulates new perspectives on contemporary new media.
About the Social Apps Lab:
The Social Apps Lab at CITRIS was created by James Holston (Anthropology) and Greg Niemeyer (Art Practice and New Media Studies), both professors at the University of California, Berkeley. The Lab focuses on the potential of cell phones and other mobile locative media to harness the participatory energies of gameplay to address social issues. Its objective is both to study this potential and to produce mobile games that generate new opportunities for research, citizen participation, and urban knowledge. At Berkeley, the Social Apps Lab develops initiatives in research, teaching, and game production. During the past year, it has focused mainly on designing cell phone apps for healthcare, participatory citizenship, and social engagement.
About CITRIS:
The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) creates information technology solutions for many of our most social, environmental, and health care problems. CITRIS was created to “shorten the pipeline” between world-class laboratory research and the creation of start-ups, larger companies, and whole industries. CITRIS facilitates partnerships and collaborations among more than 300 faculty members and thousands of students from numerous departments at four University of California campuses (Berkeley, Davis, Merced, and Santa Cruz) with industrial researchers from over 60 corporations. Together, the groups are thinking about information technology in ways it’s never been thought of before.
CITRIS works to find solutions to many of the concerns that face all of us today, from monitoring the environment and finding viable, sustainable energy alternatives to simplifying health care delivery and developing secure systems for electronic medical records and remote diagnosis, all of which will ultimately boost economic productivity. CITRIS represents a bold and exciting vision that leverages one of the top university systems in the world with highly successful corporate partners and government resources.
History and scope of the project
http://citris-uc.org/news/2011_citris_seed_funding_awards
In June 2011, our project received its initial seed funding from CITRIS. The grant was one of 17 seed funding awards given; notably, all proposals involve multi-campus (UC) and/or multi-disciplinary teams with lead investigators from numerous departments.
Proposals were funded proportionally to CITRIS’s stated focus in strategic areas, which are:
Delivering “Quality Healthcare Everywhere” for Californians
Adaptable Cities
Energy Modeling
Intelligent Systems.
Development on the project, initially called “Pwning Asthma Triggers,” began in the Fall of 2011. Now called AirQuest, the game design team brings together developers, artists, researchers, scientists, and engineers from UC Berkeley, UC Merced, and UC Santa Cruz. More information about our team can be found at http://socialappslab.com/airquest/.
Final stages of development are underway now. We recently conducted two playtesting sessions in Fresno (one in May 2012, the other in June 2012), and plan to release the game for the Apple iPad on the App Store and for Android on Google Play in Spring of 2013. We plan to host two launch events in Fresno, Berkeley, and at various Edsource, Code for Oakland, and Code for America events. Future versions of the game will be created by users in high schools who modify the game.
Our goal has been to create a serious game about air-quality management and asthma, initially based in the California Central Valley but extensible to other locations and regions. Unlike the vast majority of games, AirQuest represents a specific geographic and sociocultural reality, highlighting the irony that although the Central Valley is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the nation, it faces high levels of poverty and unemployment and severe air-quality problems arising from the Valley’s unique topography and weather. In fact, according to the California Air Resources Board, ozone and particulate-matter (PM) air pollution in the Valley is among the worst in the state. In addition to its regional specificity, AirQuest’s primary innovation lies in making scientific models and data—from regional wind patterns to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sensor readings—accessible and playable to non-specialists.
The game’s main character, Keanan, is a 14-year-old high school student with asthma, who initially feels weak and isolated as a result of his condition. As the game progresses, Keanan learns to manage his asthma, decode climate maps, and neutralize common air pollutants, and ultimately to see asthma as a special form of environmental intelligence. The game thus shifts perceptions of air pollution and asthma away from the realm of negative, individual experience to that of an immediate and concrete issue for everyone who breathes.
Mobile City Chronicles: Boss Level, May 10
After 15 weeks of study, debate, analysis and creative outbursts, the students of our Art and Anthro course on game design, Mobile City Chronicles, are presenting five final games, to wit:
American Dreams: Berkeley Edition (real estate card game)
Infected Minds (interactive narrative)
Racoonville (boardgame)
Localfolk (memory mapping app)
HabiTooth (interactive narrative)
Come join us to play these games, use these apps, or help your favorite team launch a start-up. The games begin on Thursday, May 10, from 9-11 AM, in UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall, Room 295.
See you there, we will provide games, donuts and coffee. Questions?
Text us at (510) 307-6145
Swinging & Flowing Success!
Our Swinging and Flowing: Inclusion and Diversity in The Age of Data Conference last Thursday (4/26) was a huge success! Throughout the day, we enjoyed compelling lectures, through-provoking debates, a unique performance from DJ Spooky, and a swingin’, flowin’ dance workshop with Traci Bartlow.
We were extremely impressed by the debate between the intellectuals from the community and those from the university. Hopefully, we will explore this theme in a future conference in the fall.
Special thanks to Professor Anna Everett, who came all the way from Santa Barbara; Helen Milner, who came from England; and DJ Spooky who came from… Mars!
For a recap on the event, agenda, photos and more- visit our Official Swinging and Flowing Site
Swinging and Flowing Student Tickets Sold Out
We are looking forward Swinging and Flowing. Student Tickets are sold out, there are a few paying tickets left however. At $20, including lunch, that is a pretty good deal. Go to include.eventbrite.com to get one of those tickets if you are interested.
Upcoming Event- Swinging and Flowing: Inclusion & Diversity in The Age of Big Data
AT&T claims that it covers 97% of all Americans. What they fail to mention is that their coverage comes at a cost- often time, a cost that bars many groups of our society from access. Even those who are able to front the cost of access are still not free. We must stop, and take a moment to realize that we are subjects to new power structures. These new power structures limit access to paths of success. Only through understanding and dissecting them, can we break free from the structural boundaries they create.
Come join our conference to discuss these issues from social, analytical and professional perspectives.
In the frame of digital media, we consider: where are the boundaries of participation? What are the conditions? and ultimately, what are the opportunities?
Details:
Time/Date: Thursday, April 26, 2012, 9AM- 7PM
Location: UC Berkeley Sutardja Dai Hall, Banato Auditorium
Registration: General ($20), Students (free)
Featuring: DJ Spooky (Keynote Speaker), Cecil Brown, Roy L. Clay, Kevin Epps, Anna Everett, Kris Fallon, Michelle Fisher, Ashley Ferro-Murray, Jennifer Gonzalez, Chalres Henry, Jabari Mahari, Omouju Miller, Helen Milner, Soraya Murray, Greg Niemeyer, Asha Richardson, Victoria Robinson, Reggie Royston, Warren Sack, Ayman Shamma, Lissa Soep, Shannon Spanhake, Ryan Shelby, and you.
Full Schedule and Registration: http://include.eventbrite.com
Sponsored by the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative, athe UC Berkeley Department of African American Studies, BCNM, the Department of Geography, the American Cultures Program, Swissnex San Francisco, and you.
Dengue Torpedo funded by UBS!
We are thrilled to announce that our project “Dengue Torpedo” has won an Innovation Grant from UBS Optimus Foundation. Dengue Torpedo is a web and cellphone service (in development) designed to motivate community residents to report and eliminate the breeding sites of the mosquito Aedes aegypti that transmits the virus causing dengue fever. Dengue is spreading uncontrollably worldwide, with numbers of cases doubling from one year to the next. Social Apps Lab co-Director James Holston will launch pilot-studies of Dengue Torpedo in Brazil in collaboration with Drs. Eva Harris, Josefina Coloma and their Sustainable Sciences Institute.
Greg Niemeyer at Lunch Bytes at the Goethe Institute
If you happen to be in Washington D.C. on April 4, and you want to add some fun sauce to your lunch, come check us out at the Goethe Institute: Thinking in Digital Terms. The announcement features an image of the Tic Toc Tiles game as played by Jan Hua. For the talk, which also features Trebor Scholz and Natalie Bookchin, Greg Niemeyer approaches the Lunch Bytes theme of the impact of information on thinking from a game culture and game design standpoint. How do we engage with information in games? Does this engagement change the way we think about information beyond games? Is this a liberating or an oppressive change, and how can we tell the difference? Niemeyer will answer these questions with references ranging from Dostojevski to Big Data by way of secret mirrors.
Social Apps Lab at UC Berkeley 