Mk

Ss. Cyril and Methodius University – Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering

The Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje is the first state University in the Republic  of Macedonia, founded in 1949. The Ss. Cyril and Methodius University develops study programmes in all scientific fields – natural sciences and mathematics, technical and technological sciences, medical sciences …

The Faculty of Computer Science and Engineering (FCSE) is the result of the unification of the two largest institutions in the area of informatics and computer technologies in Macedonia – the Institute of Informatics (II) at Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics and the Institute of Computer Technics and Informatics at Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies (ICTI).

 

Trajkovski & Partners Consulting

T&P Consulting is management consultancy devoted to transfer and adopting best practices related to Information Security, IT Service Management, Quality and Business Continuity through consulting and professional capacity building, participation in R&D projects and various types of international cooperation.

T&P operates in the field of management consultancy almost 3 decades. T&P Consulting team is consisted of experienced and highly dedicated consultants, with rich educational background, many attended trainings and the high number of certificates earned.

 

Research Activities

In our research we used a large interactive table display. We invited participants to interact with the touch table by playing simple games based on three basic gestures: tap, drag and rotate. All of the participants played in pairs, while their interactive sessions were video recorded.

The games that the participants played were custom-made to correspond to a single learned gesture. Every subsequent came assumed that the previous gesture was learned, so it could be used in addition to the gesture to be learned. No instructions were given on how to play the game, making the gesture discovery an intuitive journey.

  • Game 1 – Bubbles. In the first game the participants had to pop continuously appearing bubbles on the screen with the tap gesture. This was an open-ended game that finished when the participants expressed the desire to move forward to the next task.
  • Game 2 – Draw. The second game was free-drawing on the table screen. This game was presented to only half of the participants in order to evaluate whether drawing, a natural activity, would encourage the subsequent acquirement of the drag gesture for other games.
  • Game 3 – Store. In the second/third game the participants had to move items to a predefined screen area by employing the drag gesture. The game was completed after the participants went through three sessions with different items and target areas.
  • Game 4 – Shape. In the third/fourth and final game the participants had to assemble a single large shape in a target area from several smaller shapes. The game was completed after the participants went through two sessions which required the assembly of different shapes.

Results

We had 60 participants in our experiment with an almost equal gender distribution and an average age of 71 years. As one of the condition for participation in the study was no prior experience, during the entry questionnaires we discovered that a few of the participants had minor previous experiences with touch technologies.

Two researchers observed and analyzed a sample of the recorded sessions in order to define common issues that occur across participants.

Infinite tap

While participants mostly stopped playing the tapping Bubbles game after a couple of minutes, there were more than few instances where participants would continue tapping and popping bubbles with increased intensity and without stopping. They either didn’t understand the open nature of the game, or they were so compulsively engaged in tapping, that they were not aware of the time spent. It is possible that not knowing the rules disrupted the flow of the game.

Performance anxiety

A significant number of the participants were initially stressed before the sessions began. Although the nature of the experiment was explained during recruitment, they were still under the mistaken impression that their performance was going to be evaluated based on Good/Bad testing parameters. Subsequently, after the session they would inquire how well they did and whether they “guessed” correctly.

Collaborative playing

Collaborative playing progressively increased in every subsequent game. While playing the first game was mostly an individual endeavor, the participants were self-encouraged to increase their collaboration in every game that followed. The last game was most engaging with lots of interactions and exchanges of ideas about how to proceed.

Game-learning satisfaction

The exit interviews and questionnaires show that using games as a learning activity to engage older adults with technology is an enjoyable approach to all participants. All of the participants expressed positive emotions and commentaries regarding the sessions and the potential for engaging in similar activities at later dates.

Conclusion

It is necessary to perform a full qualitative analysis before issues are properly identified and compared with other GIRDA partners. This will help build a theoretical framework for the mentor guide.