Category Archives: Apps I Like

Cat Got Your App

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Oh hai, I’m Chewie!

I have been thinking about starting a series of posts called “N of One,” where I observe or interview one person about doing something interesting and report the results here. However, today is my blogging day and I find myself alone with my cat, so it seems like my first “N of One” is going to be about Animal-Computer Interaction. In this episode, Chewie (actually, Chui, but no need to be formal here) experiments with several different cat games for the iPad.

So, here we go. (1) We started out with the free version of the GameForCats laser game. I already knew that this is a game she would enjoy and indeed, she gleefully scored several points in the game. Rating: 10/10!

(2) I upgraded ($1.99) to the full version which unlocked the mouse and the butterfly games, but Chewie was freaked out by the loud noises both animals made when caught and chose to observe the movement from afar instead. Rating: 4/10.

(3) Chewie got bored with watching the iPad and found that my wallet was more fun to bat around.

(4) To get her attention back, we downloaded the app Cat Games for $0.99 ($0.25 to Humane Society). Unfortunately, all the games in this app failed to get Chewie engaged in interacting. The laser and tarantula games didn’t give any feedback when you caught them. Some of the other games actually made dog sounds, which spooked her. The only part that she liked was the cat meow that was the chime whenever I interacted with the interface. Rating: 5/10.

(5) Next, we downloaded Cat Toys Lite (free). This did get Chewie’s attention again. The mouse made funny sounds, that weren’t too loud. Rating: 8/10.

(6) Chewie kept nudging the iPad up with her nose. I think she thought that the mouse was actually underneath.

(7) Okay, so the first app seemed to be the clear winner, but I wanted to make sure that this wasn’t just Chewie getting bored with video games. So, at the end we returned to the GamesForCats laser game … and it still really got her attention and really got her engaged with it!

In conclusion, my cat seems to prefer free apps. Anybody else torture amuse their cat with iPad games? How did it go?

Making Current Videochat Technologies Work Better for Your Family

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Photo from NYT article “Grandma’s on the Computer Screen” (November 26, 2008)

As a family communication researcher, people frequently ask me for ideas on making videochat work better for their families (especially between children and grandparents). While I think there is a lot of room to make new technologies in this space, there are ways of leveraging existing technologies, too.

One of the big challenges for videochat is that setup can be problematic and frequently requires a tech savvy adult on each side. For example, a participant in one of my studies described his experience:

Video is nice, but getting it to work from both the ends wasn’t worth it. We’d have the phone going, and I’d be saying “hit that thing on the right” or whatever. It would take forever to get it set up. Especially with people that are not that technical. Like we tried video with grandparents and my dad is the least computer literate person I know. We literally spent and hour and a half setting up a call which lasted 5 minutes. It gets to the point when it’s not worth it. So, our main method is the phone.

One solution is installing TeamViewer on the remote machine (e.g., next time you visit). This free program gives you really easy-to-use remote access so that now you can start the call on both sides at the agreed upon time and do basic troubleshooting without having to do tech support over the phone.

Skype has a setting for automatically answering incoming calls, with video.

Another solution is setting up a dedicated device (such as an old laptop) at a good location in the remote participants’ home. Set Skype to start and auto-login each time the machine restarts and set incoming calls to auto-connect with video. However, the downside of this approach is that you have to use social conventions to manage availability (e.g., call first by phone and agree on a time to connect before trying to Skype).

Another problem with currently-available videochat is that it really gets boring pretty quick (this is especially true while talking to children). The key to making videochat work is coming up with compelling activities to do together, rather than just talking. There is a lot of great research in this space, as well as some existing stuff out there. So, if you’re struggling  to find something to do to keep your videochat sessions more engaging, try a few of these and see if you like them:

  • Story Visit from Nokia is a great free tool to read books together remotely and even gives advice to make the reading experience more engaging!
  • Once you’re done with those stories, you can try to find other books online (you’ll have to coordinate the page-turning yourself, but at least you can see them easily). I suggest using the International Children’s Digital Library which has a huge collection.
  • Yahoo! Multiplayer games can be a good way to stay in touch as long as you can find somebody to help set it up on the other side (or use the TeamViewer trick above). Or try Rounds, which combines videochat and games.
  • If you want to try something that stretches across sessions, I would suggest trying a virtual world together, choosing one that suits your child’s age and interests. The popular ones include: Petpet Park, Club Penguin, Neopets, World of Warcraft, and Minecraft. Unfortunately, the last two are best played fullscreen, so it may reduce the communication to audio-only.
  • You can use an online whiteboard (like Scriblink) to draw together synchronously, or sign up for a specialized social network like Sesame’s Streets familiesnearandfar.org to send asynchronous drawings and messages (this site was made for military families, but is open to everybody)
  • Finally, sometimes it can be fun just to play with regular physical toys over videochat. Some ideas that work well include: puppet show, tea party, playing the game Battleship, showing magic tricks, and dressing up dolls for a fashion show. I’m sure you can come up with other things based on your interests.
If you have other ideas that have worked for you, I would be love to hear them here.

 

How Gamification Works for Me

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Some of the tools I use to gamify my life

Gamification–rewarding everyday behaviors with fun, points, or virtual prizes–is kind of a big deal nowadays. I’m a big proponent of gamification and I wanted to share why it works for me.

The reason I like gamification is because I invented it. I mean, you might have invented it too, but that doesn’t make my personal act of creation any less true. When I was a kid on a long errand with my parents, I would count my steps. That was the first time I ever counted to 1000. I announced it proudly to my parents and they dispensed the appropriate praise (achievement unlocked!). In school, I gamified paying attention by setting and tracking goals, such as ask or answer a question in every class for a month. In life I gamified everyday stuff, like go as long as I can without missing a day of flossing (keep the date written on my bathroom mirror). Of course, all of the points were just in my head and nobody else cared about the games that make my life just a bit more fun and just a bit less tedious.

Today, I use a number of existing tools (and tools that I have appropriated outside of their original purpose) to gamify my life:

  • I check in on FourSquare when I go somewhere to get badges, mayorships, and points
  • I use EpicWin to get loot and level-up a character by completing real tasks on my to-do list
  • I level up my Pokemon by getting high step counts on my Pokewalker pedometer
  • At CHI this year, I used MissionRunner to complete missions, get badges, and get actual prizes while getting the most out of my conference experience
  • I get kudos for saving the greatest percent on groceries by posting my awesome savings on the fridge and also on SouthernSavers.com for their Friday Finals.
  • I have my own set of daily and weekly goals (based on The Happiness Project book) and I track them using Salud! There’s no better reward than seeing a “perfect” day or week (though, this is closer to the way I gamified things as a child — it’s all in my head).

There are four big ways that gamification makes my life better:

  • Gives me an excuse to do what I should — when the thing that I should be doing like exploring a new city, talking to a stranger, or walking 10000 steps a day feels more awkward than the thing that I’m currently doing (e.g., working in my hotel room, talking with people I already know, or sitting on the couch), sometimes the game gives me just enough of an extra push to do the right thing. It also sometimes makes a good excuse to give to others about your activity or changing activities.
  • Burst of energy when close to a milestone — when I get close to the next level, the next badge, or the next round number, I get a burst of energy that helps me get there. For example, yesterday I was this close to hitting level 10 on my EpicWin character, so I actually got some of today’s todos done last night just to get that level-up feeling.
  • Helps me act as the person that I want to be — this is particularly true of games where the achievements and status are shared with others in my social network. For example, I want to be the kind of person who explores new places and has fun during the week and on weekends. If when I look over the week’s checkins on foursquare all I see is “work” and “home,” I’m actually a bit more motivated to put aside the Internet and go exploring with friends, so that my checkins may actually be interesting to my friends and give off the impression that I want.
  • Gives me tracking and reflection for free — most games track your progress, making self-tracking into a fun credit-getting step instead of a boring chore. I track because I like to see my progress in the game, but when I need to, I now have a treasure trove of personal data that I can review for to gain insights about myself (e.g., the longer I plan to spend working, the less I get done), to remember specific details of past events (e.g., what was that restaurant we liked on the road trip in June?), and to see potential areas to improve (e.g., Really? It’s been 5 months since my last haircut?).

So, big kudos to everybody who does this kind of work. I’d love to see more stuff out there to help me make my life even more fun. I’d love to hear about other apps, tools, and strategies that you use to make your life more fun.