Tadeusz Stach
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Publications by Tadeusz Stach (bibliography)
» 2009 «
Pinelle, David, Wong, Nelson, Stach, Tadeusz and Gutwin, Carl (2009): Usability heuristics for networked multiplayer games. In: GROUP09 - International Conference on Supporting Group Work 2009. pp. 169-178. Available online
“Networked multiplayer games must support a much wider variety of interactions than single-player games because networked games involve communication and coordination between players. This means that designers must consider additional usability issues that relate to group play -- but there are currently no usability engineering methods that are specifically oriented towards the needs of multiplayer games. To address this problem, we developed a new set of usability heuristics, called Networked Game Heuristics (NGH), which can be used in the design and evaluation of networked multiplayer games. The new heuristics were identified by analyzing problem reports from 382 reviews of networked PC games, covering six main genres. We aggregated problem reports into ten problem categories (covering issues from session management to cheating to training for novice players) and developed heuristics that describe how these usability problems can be avoided. We tested the new heuristics by having evaluators use them and an existing set to assess the usability of two networked games. Evaluators found more usability problems with NGH, and stated that the new heuristics were better for evaluating multiplayer game usability. Our research is the first to present networked game heuristics that are derived from real problem reports, and the first to evaluate the heuristics' effectiveness in a realistic usability test.”
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» 2008 «
Pinelle, David, Nacenta, Miguel A., Gutwin, Carl and Stach, Tadeusz (2008): The Effects of Co-Present Embodiments on Awareness and Collaboration in Tabletop Groupware. In: Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Graphics Interface May 28-30, 2008, Windsor, Ontario, Canada. pp. 1-8.
“Most current tabletop groupware systems use direct touch, where people manipulate objects by touching them with a pen or a fingertip. The use of people's real arms and hands provides obvious awareness information, but workspace access is limited by the user's reach. Relative input techniques, where users manipulate a cursor rather than touching objects directly, allow users to reach all areas of the table. However, the only available awareness information comes from the virtual embodiment of the user (e.g., their cursor). This presents designers with a tradeoff: direct-touch techniques have advantages for group awareness; relative input techniques offer additional power but less awareness information. In this paper, we explore this tradeoff, and we explore the design space of virtual embodiments to determine whether factors such as size, realism, and visibility can improve awareness and coordination. We conducted a study in which seven groups carried out a picture-categorizing task using seven techniques: direct touch and relative input with six different virtual embodiments. Our results provide both valuable information to designers of tabletop groupware, and a number of new directions for future research.”
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Pinelle, David, Stach, Tadeusz and Gutwin, Carl (2008): TableTrays: Temporary, reconfigurable work surfaces for tabletop groupware. In: Third IEEE International Workshop on Tabletops and Interactive Surfaces Tabletop 2008 October 1-3, 2008, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. pp. 41-48. Available online
Pinelle, David, Wong, Nelson and Stach, Tadeusz (2008): Using genres to customize usability evaluations of video games. In: Proceedings of the 2008 Conference on Future Play 2008. pp. 129-136. Available online
“Video games are varied, with vastly different visual layouts and interaction styles; however, most games that share a common genre still have many user interface similarities. These similarities suggest that genres can be used as a conceptual framework for examining design issues in video games, and for developing a deeper understanding of how the design process can be specialized for specific types of games. In this paper, we consider how genre relates to one aspect of design -- the usability of games, which deals with players' ability to learn, control, and understand a game interface. We report results from a study where we coded usability problems in reviews of 108 commercial video games. The review set included 18 games from each of six major game genres. We statistically analyzed the problems from each genre, and found significant differences between many of the genres. We present usability profiles for each genre based on the problem distributions that we found. The profiles describe both common and infrequent problems in each genre and provide details on how they commonly occur in games. The profiles can be used to specialize usability evaluations by helping designers focus on common problems seen in games from each genre.”
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» 2007 «
Stach, Tadeusz, Gutwin, Carl, Pinelle, David and Irani, Pourang (2007): Improving recognition and characterization in groupware with rich embodiments. In: Proceedings of ACM CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2007. pp. 11-20. Available online
“Embodiments are visual representations of people in a groupware system. Embodiments convey awareness information such as presence, location, and movement -- but they provide far less information than what is available from a real body in a face-to-face setting. As a result, it is often difficult to recognize and characterize other people in a groupware system without extensive communication. To address this problem, information-rich embodiments use ideas from multivariate information visualization to maximize the amount of information that is represented about a person. To investigate the feasibility of rich embodiment and their effects on group interaction, we carried out three studies. The first shows that users are able to recall and interpret a large set of variables that are graphically encoded on an embodiment. The second and third studies demonstrated rich embodiments in two groupware systems -- a multiplayer game and a drawing application -- and showed that the enhanced representations do improve recognition and characterization, and that they can enrich interaction in a variety of ways.”
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» 2006 «
Reetz, Adrian, Gutwin, Carl, Stach, Tadeusz, Nacenta, Miguel A. and Subramanian, Sriram (2006): Superflick: a natural and efficient technique for long-distance object placement on digital tables. In: Proceedings of the 2006 Conference on Graphics Interface 2006. pp. 163-170. Available online
“Moving objects past arms' reach is a common action in both real-world and digital tabletops. In the real world, the most common way to accomplish this task is by throwing or sliding the object across the table. Sliding is natural, easy to do, and fast: however, in digital tabletops, few existing techniques for long-distance movement bear any resemblance to these real-world motions. We have designed and evaluated two tabletop interaction techniques that closely mimic the action of sliding an object across the table. Flick is an open-loop technique that is extremely fast. Superflick is based on Flick, but adds a correction step to improve accuracy for small targets. We carried out two user studies to compare these techniques to a fast and accurate proxy-based technique, the radar view. In the first study, we found that Flick is significantly faster than the radar for large targets, but is inaccurate for small targets. In the second study, we found no differences between Superflick and radar for either time or accuracy. Given the simplicity and learnability of flicking, our results suggest that throwing-based techniques have promise for improving the usability of digital tables.”
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Mar 18th, 2010
Changes to this page (author)
23 Feb 2010: Enabled abstracts to be shown on Tadeusz Stach's author page.26 Jun 2009: Author was edited 02 Jun 2009: Author was edited
29 May 2009: Author was edited
12 May 2008: Author was edited
12 May 2008: Author was edited
23 Jun 2007: Author was edited
19 Jun 2007: Author was added to the bibliography
