It's been a while I haven't posted about past and current research projects conducted with partners. Last week, I went to DPPI 2011 (Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces) in Milano, a conference that focused on "How Can Design Research serve Industry?". I'll get back to the conference itself later and only focus here on the paper I presented. Written with Timothée Jobert, a Grenoble-based researcher (CEA-LITUS), our paper was about how user-centered design approaches can be employed in the video-game industry. Our point was to show how users can be taken into account at the beginning of the design process, and not just when a prototype is ready to be thrown in the usability laboratory. The short paper is based on a case study of how players use gestural interfaces such as the Nintendo Wii and the Bodypad. Conducted 2 years ago, the starting point of this field study was the development of a new accelerometer sensors by a company called Movea. We conducted a field study in order to explore user appropriation of such interfaces, define a design space and it led to the development of various game prototypes (by eXperience Team and Widescreen Games).

The paper can be found at the following URL.

Slides from the presentation are available on Slideshare:

[slideshare id=8421676&doc=dppi2011slides-110625085011-phpapp02]