Socio-Ec (h) o: ambient intelligence and gameplay

This chapter describes the preliminary research of an ambient intelligent system known as socio-ec(h)o. socio-ec(h)o explores the design and implementation of an ambient intelligent system for sensing and display, user modeling, and interaction models based on game structures. Our interaction model is based on a game structure including levels, body states, goals and game skills. Body states are the body movements and positions that players must discover in order to complete a level and in turn represent a learned game skill. The paper provides an overview of background concepts and related research. We describe the game structure and prototype of our environment. We discuss games research concepts we utilized and our approach to group user models based on Richard Bartle’s game types. We explain the role of embodied cognition within our design and elaborate on what we chose to encode as embodied actions, cognition and communication. We describe how we utilized selective responses that were real-time, gradient, provided rewards and were unique to different group user models. We introduce our approach to designing ambient intelligent systems that is ecologically inspired. We stress the empirical nature of the design work and the role of participatory design in developing our system.