Design and Evaluation of Serious Games and Virtual Experiences for Safety and Emergency Preparedness
Virtual experiences and serious games, i.e. video games to further training and education objectives, are increasingly used in a variety of domains, including health and safety. However, compared to entertainment games, the design and evaluation of such computer applications is more complex because it needs to take into account several additional factors that are not well understood yet. In this talk, I will introduce and illustrate how we addressed some of the current issues in the design and evaluation of serious games and virtual experiences, aiming at improving their theoretical grounding as well as their practical effectiveness for safety applications. I will also show how we applied the proposed ideas to real-world problems. For example, our extensive work with first responders (in particular, doctors and nurses of Emergency Medical Services) led, among other things, to a serious game for advanced life support training used in real hospital courses, and a civil protection game aimed instead at the general public. The talk will include a detailed illustration and discussion of our latest project that is reinventing safety instructions for aircraft passengers in novel ways by using game technologies and is financed by a grant of the US FAA (Federal Aviation Administration).
Luca Chittaro
Human-Computer Interaction Lab
University of Udine, Italy
http://hcilab.uniud.it
Luca Chittaro is full professor of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Udine, Italy, where he heads the HCI Lab (http://hcilab.uniud.it). His major research interests are in the area of human-computer interaction, particularly in virtual reality, mobile devices, serious games, persuasive technologies, and their applications in health and safety. He has authored or co-authored over 160 academic publications.
He has received research grants from a wide range of organizations, including the European Union (EU), the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MIUR), and companies such as the Benetton Group.
He has been co-chair of international conferences such as ACM Web3D 2004, ACM Web3D 2005, Mobile HCI 2003, Mobile HCI 2007 and Persuasive 2014. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Personal and Ubiquitous Computing journal and the Journal of Mobile User Experience. He has been editor of special issues of international journals such as Computers & Education, Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction.