NeuroGame

Introduction

NeuroGame is an experimental approach to the problems involved in neurorehabilitation utilising techniques and technologies adopted in game developments. Consequently, two frameworks very distinct in nature—conceptual and technical, collaboratively drive the whole project.

Context

Conceptual Framework: Neurorehabilitation

Neurorehabilitation is interested in assisting patients who are recovering from consequential injuries and illness. The mechanical treatment and assistance are offered by teams of medics and therapists working collaboratively.

The Multi-disciplinary Team (MDT) consist of a medical doctor acting as the coordinator, a clinical psychologist, medical staff, a speech/language therapist, a senior nurse, an occupational therapist, a physiological therapist, and a social worker.

They hold a meeting once a week to discuss key issues and setting goals and activities relevant to the treatment. The complexities involved:

1. Interaction, both among the actors (the team member) and between these people and information. The way data is presented is neither appealing nor memorable. And more time is being spent on meeting rather than actual work.
2. Relationship between the patient’s motivation and the mechanical treatment offered by the team. It takes both aspects to reach a satisfying outcome.

Technical Framework: Pixel, Capture, Glitch, and Game

Game development technologies and tools can be broadly categorised as:

1. 3D modelling
2. Game engine
3. Scenario & scripting

In relation to the previous work and the lectures, the project is concerned in a topic of psychology and cognitive science: memorisation & recollection.

How can information be efficiently stored (memorisation)? How can recollection be performed quickly yet accurately to improve decision making?

Hence, my enquiry:

“I seek to improve the quality of the team interaction through gamification”

 

Research

Conceptual Exploration

The MDT meetings

Several forms of documentation: personal notes and personally/collectively experienced stories, patient’s medical record, and historical documentation of each meeting (Ms Word doc).

Flow of Information

An interesting insight: the whole knowledge (of a case) is vague, distributed, and amorphous. One can argue that it encompasses the whole process and documentation (thus everywhere), but it is impossible to reconstruct and store it into one single medium (thus nowhere).

The interpretation of information as knowledge is very dependent on its meta-data, e.g. contexts. To illustrate, each person can have the same information but different contexts, and thus different knowledge.

Questionnaire

A questionnaire to the MDT inquiring on three topics:

1. On the patient

37.5 % ever confused the patients one another. 83.3% ever had difficulties recalling stories.
Most build mental association; others rely on medical records. Salient features can help differentiate cases.

2. On the treatment

All agree that internal factors (mood/emotion) play the bigger role.
It is also worth noting that half identify themselves as an essential external factor.

3. On the MDT meeting

Most say that while the meetings are useful and of good quality, they need to be more efficient. Most are also interested in viewing the case from others’ viewpoints.

Technical Exploration

This was more of a labour-intensive than a clever one, admittedly. There are 3 distinct aspects of game development, add a data tier, and you have 2 more. Much time was spent in switching between these “contexts”.

 Theoretical Exploration

There are four theories worth mentioning within this section.

1. Memory Palace

The Ancient Greek’s concept of memorisation. Cited by Yates, Luria, O’Keefe and Nadel, the theory establishes the significance of spatial association.

2. Visual & Spatial Orientation

Supporting the memory palace, Carruthers asserts that visual image needs to be attached to a piece of memory in the first place.

3. Mnemosyne

Warburg’s masterpiece informs us of his stance object-information associations. However, the Mnemosyne is more than just a static map of information: the juxtaposition of an image to another can represent and/or incite different perceptions and understanding.

4. Theatre of Memory

Giulio Camillo’s work is a physical representation of above concepts. It shows how association of a piece of memory to both an object and its surrounding, i.e. points of reference, works in a real world space.

Formulation of the design opportunity:

“Virtual environment built on top of game platform to represent discussion on neurorehabilitation.”

  

Solution

The NeuroGame starts with a building—the Temple of Mind, that represents the patient’s case.

Inside are 5 interactive pillars. The thin pillar holds general information regarding diagnoses and conditions. Each of the others represents a key issue; starting from left to right:

1. book—cognitive and language,
2. bird wing—mobility,
3. mirror—emotion,
4. key—housing.

When the user interacts with an object an information panel pops up. The three horizontal bars represent the percentage of achieved, partially achieved, and not yet achieved goals and team activities associated with the key issue.

The “Proceed” button opens another room behind the object.

The Room of Cognition & Language is a model of San Marco Piazza in Venice. St Mark’s Campanile and Basilica, as well as the evenly placed pillars on each side of the piazza pose as the main points of reference.

The Room of Mobility is a moon surface with two landmarks—The New York’s Empire State Building and London’s Gherkin, and a lot of craters as points of reference.

The Room of Emotion is a forest. The trees and bushes are the natural reference points.

The Room of Housing is more of an experimental one, with no clear point of reference but similar looking buildings—colour being the only apparent distinctive feature.

 

The pillars and their properties

The player is trying to create a new pillar

 

 

References

Carruthers, Mary J. The book of memory: A study of memory in medieval culture. No. 10. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Foer, Joshua. Moonwalking with Einstein: The art and science of remembering everything. Penguin, 2011.

Luria, Aleksandr R. “The mind of a mnemonist: A little book about a vast memory (L. Solotaroff, Trans.).” (1968).

O’keefe, John, and Lynn Nadel. The hippocampus as a cognitive map. Vol. 3. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.

Yates, Frances Amelia. The art of memory. Vol. 64. Random House, 1992.

Web pages

http://warburg.library.cornell.edu/

Click to access HCMComplete.pdf

http://ivebeenreadinglately.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/giulio-camillos-theater-of-memory.html

Resources

https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/

http://archive3d.net/?a=download&id=59436110

http://tf3dm.com/3d-model/old-scroll-feather-candle-52927.html

The not so boring relationship between boredom, creativity, and technology

Theory

What Is Boredom?

Boredom is a pervasive yet complex phenomenon which researchers have attempted to describe, but no real consensus has ever been made. Mann and Cadman, however, suggest that boredom does not denote a situation in which one has completely nothing to do; rather, there is no activity the individual is keen enough to do or continue doing (Mann & Cadman, 2014).

It’s Role

Despite the general association of boredom to negative feelings, as well as negative consequences, several researchers believe that boredom as an emotion has at least a purpose, and being bored might actually be advantageous. Scott & Lyman (1968) argues that boredom could be used as a tool to communicate a person’s lack of presence. Others (e.g. Klapp, 1986 and Hoover, 1986) argue that boredom could be a defending mechanism against unwanted external stimuli. One specific idea that I am interested in is that boredom could lead to increased creativity, even at least quantitatively (Mann, et.al, 2014).

Indeed, boredom is neither a silver bullet nor have a substantial benefit by itself; rather, an essential part of the whole idea incubation & generation process that undermines creativity–or serendipity as Mel Woods last time worded it (Makri et. al. 2014). To be able to give way to creativity, we must be able to bear with boredom much like the patient kids in the Marshmallow Experiment (Walter, et.al 1972). Only when the boredom prolongs, we would then enter a daydreaming phase, in which our mind shifts focus from boring external stimuli into more attractive internal contemplation. This condition allows us to keep working subconsciously, while at the same time find new perspectives and connections among previously seemingly unrelated things in our mind (Smallwood, 2011).

Figure 1. Boredom to daydreaming

Technology, On the Other Hand

Technology is everywhere and anywhere. It is so easily accessible, that we use them without much effort and consent. It has also provided many solutions to our problems and new insights into the future. It has indeed become an inseparable part of our modern life.

Figure 2. The internet in a minute (2014)

The ubiquitous nature of technology has shaped many aspects of our lives, one of which the perception of time and energy. When immersed in technology-powered media, we tend to incorrectly perceive and calculate the time and effort needed to perform activities. For instance, when we think of just having a glance on the Facebook feed, it prolongs into an hour of procrastination.

Technology has given us an easy way of escaping boredom; and consequently, creativity (Cooke, 2011). For example, we would turn to the laptop on the desk and browse the internet every time boredom appears. Or we would automatically reach our smart phone and turn on Facebook or Twitter when waiting. These habits have effectively eradicated our chance and tolerance to being bored.

Nevertheless, if we take a step back and look at technology as a tool/medium, we should be able to find a compromise between technology and boredom. Thus, I inquire:

With technology as a medium, do we dare to re-embrace boredom?

 

Research

What Others Have Made

Several people have developed mobile-based applications in order to negotiate the issue of boredom and technology. Most of these are monitoring-type, i.e. the application tracks daily use of the mobile and reports back to the user. These applications do not explicitly put any constraint to the user as what they essentially do are tracking and reporting back. Included in this type of application are Moment by David Holesh, BreakFree by the couple Mrigaen and Nupur Kapadia, and Checky by Calm.com.

 

Figure 3. Moment, BreakFree and Calm

Another type is tutorial-interactive, e.g. Calm by Calm.com. It does not explicitly encourage re-embracing boredom, rather it aims to the next phase of boredom; internal focus. Calm encourages its users to take a short break every day and indulge in self-meditation.

Questionnaires

I sent out two sets of questionnaires during the whole course of the project. The first one was to uncover essential problems that are happening to people related to my triangle and assist me in finding the ongoing issue between boredom, creativity and technology.

The overview of the first set can be accessed here:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1OOzTNIytanIgfDk7I9EUjRJZzim8c_o4Ktf1LQdEnzs/edit?usp=sharing

From this, I have identified three issues that could be nominated as the project’s main topic, and considering the relevancy of available resources (e.g. DI talks, lectures) at the moment, I decided to go with Boredom.

Figure 4. Triangle to topics

Therefore, the second set asked people how they perceive boredom and what makes them bored.

Figure 5. Q2 first question

Figure 6. Q2 2nd & 3rd questions

Figure 7. Q2 4th & 5th questions

The results are as follows:

Figure 8. What people say bore them

Figure 9. Boring activities

Figure 10. Being bored frequency & position towards boredom

Figure 11. What people say about boredom

Varying Activities & Being bored

I utilized various methods of gathering information, some of which directly related to the matter in hand, some others might not as much. Nevertheless, as Makri et.al. suggest, this is also an important step of the whole creative thinking process.

And as many researchers and creative professionals have suggested, it is important to take a break from inputting information into your brain and daydream, especially in producing creative works. Hence, this is what I did many times, while doing subconscious-safe activities (those who do not need much cognitive power; i.e. boring activities) or even when doing nothing.

Several Takeaways after Personal Contemplation

Boredom can be associated with both affective and cognitive, i.e. as one’s perception of something and the ratio of the person’s skill level to an activity’s challenge level.

Boredom can be explained as a saturation level of information (about something) in a person’s mind, i.e. familiarity. There is a threshold within which an activity or object will not be perceived as boring. But when the level is either too low or too high boredom can happen. Familiarity is obviously affected by time and memory; e.g. a repetition with high frequency (happens often in a short period of time) has high saturation level.

Figure 12. Boredom & Familiarity

Most people perceive boredom as a negative situation that must be avoided. However, many creative professionals have emphasized that boredom is a fuel of creativity and how instant external stimulus can be a serious distraction to this.

Indeed, creative works differ to those that are goal-oriented in that the former require divergent thinking much more than the latter. And divergent thinking happens in the internal contemplation phase when incubated ideas clash with each other and create new ideas and perspectives.

 

The Artefact

I developed a Virtual Reality application, CountingStars that runs on the Android Operating System using a game development platform, Unity. VR environment offers immersive experience to the user, so he can create a space in time for himself and be bored free of external distraction.

Figure 13. CountingStars icon

Figure 14. CountingStars running in Unity

What the user does in the game is sit on the moon and count the stars, which spawn indefinitely just like real stars in the sky. He counts a star by staring at it for some time (~1 second). The counted star will then disappear, so that the user will not count it twice.

The game does not provide real time feedback about neither the time passed nor the real counting as it meant to train the user to be patient in being bored and obviously the counting itself is not important.

Figure 15. Presentation day. Thanks to Lee for being my participant.

 

 

 

Game assets are credited to:

Music: Moon River by Audrey Hepburn, piano covered by Piano Instrumental Covers

Moon terrain by Black Sun
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/35818

Sparks prefab by James Heazlewood

Unity Sparks system

Further information about the platform:

Unity
http://www.unity3d.com/

Google Unity SDK
https://developers.google.com/cardboard/unity/

 

References

Hoover, Michael. “Extreme individualisation, false subjectivity and boredom.”Virginia Journal of Sociology 2 (1986): 35-51.

Klapp, Orrin Edgar. Overload and boredom: Essays on the quality of life in the information society. Greenwood Publishing Group Inc., 1986.

Makri, Stephann, et al. ““Making my own luck”: Serendipity strategies and how to support them in digital information environments.” Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology 65.11 (2014): 2179-2194.

Mann, Sandi, and Rebekah Cadman. “Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative?.” Creativity Research Journal 26.2 (2014): 165-173.

Mischel, Walter, Ebbe B. Ebbesen, and Antonette Raskoff Zeiss. “Cognitive and attentional mechanisms in delay of gratification.” Journal of personality and social psychology 21.2 (1972): 204.

Smallwood, Jonathan. “Mind-wandering while reading: Attentional decoupling, mindless reading and the cascade model of inattention.” Language and Linguistics Compass 5.2 (2011): 63-77.

Scott, Marvin B., and Stanford M. Lyman. “Accounts.” American sociological review (1968): 46-62.

 

Web URLs, last accessed 10/12/2015

http://www.breakfree-app.com/

http://www.calm.com/

https://www.checkyapp.com

https://www.domo.com/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phil-cooke-phd/down-time-creativity_b_1078042.html

https://inthemoment.io/

To Empathize

حَدَّثَنَا مُسَدَّدٌ، قَالَ حَدَّثَنَا يَحْيَى، عَنْ شُعْبَةَ، عَنْ قَتَادَةَ، عَنْ أَنَسٍ ـ رضى الله عنه ـ عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم‏.‏
وَعَنْ حُسَيْنٍ الْمُعَلِّمِ، قَالَ حَدَّثَنَا قَتَادَةُ، عَنْ أَنَسٍ، عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ “‏ لا يُؤْمِنُ أَحَدُكُمْ حَتَّى يُحِبَّ لأَخِيهِ مَا يُحِبُّ لِنَفْسِهِ ‏”‏‏.‏

Narrated Anas:

The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “None of you will have faith till he wishes for his (Muslim) brother what he likes for himself.” (HR. Bukhari)

This was the topic of last Friday Prayer’s sermon, reminding how essential it is to every Muslim to empathize with his/her brothers/sisters in Islam.

This fundamental virtue that should be one of the characteristics of every member of this religion is what people generally understand as the Golden Rule; in positive directive form may appear as ‘One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself.’

Empathy is a very fundamental yet powerful concept that when exercised will give birth to the feeling of peace in one’s heart as well as in others’; which is the very lexical translation of the word Islam: peacefulness.

Empathy involves paying serious attention to others’ feelings as one would do his/hers. It also involves not being negatively presumptuous (su’udzon) of others’ deeds and trying to find the good reason behind the action (husnudzon).

The preacher then went on by citing the hadith on 5 rights that a Muslim has over another.

حَدَّثَنَا مُحَمَّدٌ، حَدَّثَنَا عَمْرُو بْنُ أَبِي سَلَمَةَ، عَنِ الأَوْزَاعِيِّ، قَالَ أَخْبَرَنِي ابْنُ شِهَابٍ، قَالَ أَخْبَرَنِي سَعِيدُ بْنُ الْمُسَيَّبِ، أَنَّ أَبَا هُرَيْرَةَ ـ رضى الله عنه ـ قَالَ سَمِعْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صلى الله عليه وسلم يَقُولُ ‏ “‏ حَقُّ الْمُسْلِمِ عَلَى الْمُسْلِمِ خَمْسٌ رَدُّ السَّلاَمِ، وَعِيَادَةُ الْمَرِيضِ، وَاتِّبَاعُ الْجَنَائِزِ، وَإِجَابَةُ الدَّعْوَةِ، وَتَشْمِيتُ الْعَاطِسِ ‏”‏‏.‏ تَابَعَهُ عَبْدُ الرَّزَّاقِ قَالَ أَخْبَرَنَا مَعْمَرٌ‏.‏ وَرَوَاهُ سَلاَمَةُ عَنْ عُقَيْلٍ‏.‏

Narrated Abu Huraira:

I heard Allah’s Messenger (ﷺ) saying, “The rights of a Muslim on the Muslims are five: to respond to the salaam, visiting the sick, to follow the funeral processions, to accept an invitation, and to reply to those who sneeze. (see Hadith 1239)

The topic is then finalized by an emphasis on how a Muslim should treat other Muslims, and even other people from other religions, starting from his feelings; that is to forgive every person who might have offended him/her, before sleeping every night.

This virtue is, of course, one of the most essential and fundamental values/exercises in the religion of Islam as it perfectly depicts what it means to be a peaceful person, to be a real Muslim.

Personally, I perceive that while this topic is relatively well-known among the Muslims, it is also one of the most easily forgotten. As various Muslim organisations with diverse views on various issues are emerging, it is getting easier to see the difference between one organization to another. What very unfortunate is that these subtle differences are growing into organizational exclusiveness, where each organization would claim the truth only for itself and not for the others, giving ways to antipathy and hatred, and forgetting the fundamental virtue above.

But O Muslims, let’s not be.

Let us return to the benevolent teachings and principles of this religion. Being empathetic and having good faith in one another, and thus becoming a real Muslim; a real peaceful person.

Allahu’alam.

 

References:

http://sunnah.com/bukhari/2/6

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule

http://sunnah.com/bukhari/23/4

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