Thematic issue on Playful Interactions and Serious Games - JAISE

Call for papers

Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments:

Thematic Issue on Playful Interactions and Serious Games 

http://jaise-journal.org/

1. Background
It is with great pleasure that we announce the Thematic Issue on "Playful Interactions and Serious Games" of the Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments (JAISE).

Intelligent environments and smart applications require creating engaging interactions with their users, which on one side requires sensing and understanding human behavior, and on the other side carefully engineered application interfaces to keep these interactions sustained and useful over longer periods. Playful interactions and serious games incorporate elements of play for this purpose. As a fundamental human activity, play engages people at every age.

This call is intended to solicit contributions from an international audience on recent developments and experiments that:
• Present innovative and state-of-the-art applications that use playful concepts in ambient intelligence settings,
• Describe game-based solutions to behavior change and pervasive healthcare problems,
• Share experiences, insights, best-practices and lessons-learned,
• Report the results of technical and social evaluations with regards to playful interaction and serious game design,
• Report results of longitudinal studies,
• Discuss and highlight the key challenges and future developments within the domain.

We are keen to encourage the submission of papers from a wide variety of backgrounds and perspectives that relate to design and deployment of playful solutions in both research and industry. Topics sought include, but are not limited to:
-Playful ambient intelligence applications for kids -Serious games in healthcare and ambient assisted living -Urban games and playful interaction with masses -Games for inducing behavior change -Psychological and sociological aspects of ambient games -Gamification -Hardware and Software for serious games -Sensors and novel interfaces used in playful interactions.


2. Submission and Proceedings
Papers should be of 12 pages or longer and adhere to the guidelines given on the Web page:
http://www.mstracker.com/submit1.php?jc=jaise
When submitting, authors should highlight that the submission is for this particular thematic issue.


3. Important Dates
Submission deadline: April 15th, 2013
First round of reviews: July 15th, 2013
Notification to authors: November 15th, 2013
Camera Ready deadline: January 15th, 2014


4. Editors
Albert Ali Salah (Guest Editor)
Boğaziçi University, Turkey
salah@boun.edu.tr

Ben Schouten (Guest Editor)
Eindhoven University of Technology,
The Netherlands
bschouten@tue.nl

Stefan Göbel (Guest Editor)
University of Darmstadt, Germany
stefan.goebel@kom.tu-darmstadt.de

Bert Arnrich (Guest Editor)
ETH Zürich, Switzerland
barnrich@ife.ee.ethz.ch

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SouthCHI Workshop Serious Gaming und Gamification in Healthcare (WS-GSGHC 2013)

Call for Papers

South CHI 2013

http://southchi.org/

Workshop for Gamification and Serious Games in Healthcare (WS-GSGHC)

Dates 01-03 July 2013

Maribor, Slovenia

The demographic change and the graying society is a global challenge for many countries around the world. Increasing numbers of old and frail people, limited numbers of caregivers and exploding costs in the health care system require new and innovative approaches to support care-givers,  care-recipients, as well as families. It is of uttermost importance that novel approaches do not only address the seniors as passive care-recievers but conceptualize them as active parts of the caring situation, supporting care requirments and actively overtaking responsibility for maintaining own health.
Using Serious Games and gamification proves a suitable tool to help people stay fit and healthy for longer, to support rehabilitation measures and to learn about illnesses, their prevention, their cure or successful strategies to cope with illnesses and maintain a quality of life. Still, games for health are not yet suitable for the mass market. It is not yet clear, how games for health can be made not only useful, but also enjoyable and fun and accepted by people of all genders, ages, education levels and technology experience.
The workshop is intended for researchers, industry and practitioners from various domains working in areas from healthcare to gerontology, who use or want to use serious games and gamification. Primary goal of the workshop is to present state-of-the-art research and to build and intensify a network of researchers and practitioners. Topics that can be discussed during the workshop range from new and innovative approaches for rehabilitation, motivation to prevent illnesses, using games for educating medical professionals, acceptance of games in healthcare and usability of these games.
The workshop is intended as a meeting-point for researchers and practitioners from different backgrounds and disciplines who work in the area of healthcare and apply methods from serious gaming and gamification. The workshop should bring together gerontologists, computer scientists, physicians, as well as psychologists, sociologists and ethicists to discuss the possibilities, limitations and consequences of games and gamification in healthcare.
Submissions:
Should be original and not submitted and/or published in other journals or conferences. There is a peer-review procedure intended, thus workshop committee members, external reviewers as well as potential authors will review the submissions. Papers selected by the Workshop Committee will be presented at the workshop and afterwards published in the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) Series.
Format:
Papers should be 8 to 12 pages long including all figures and references.
The format should be according to the LNCS format and submitted to the conference system as a single PDF file. Submissions must be fully anonymous, with no author names, affiliations acknowledgements, or obvious references. The submission should begin with a title, abstract and a list of key words.
Deadlines:
All paper should be submitted no later than January 18th 2013 via the SouthCHI conference website.
Notification will be given no later than February 8th 2013.
Contact:
Philipp Brauner
philipp.brauner@rwth-aachen.de
http://www.comm.rwth-aachen.de/index.php?article_id=657&clang=1
Organizers:
Philipp Brauner is a researcher at the Human-Computer-Interaction Center (HCIC) at RWTH Aachen University and a member of the eHealth Research Group, a DFG-funded Excellence University program of RWTH Aachen University. He has an interdisciplinary academic background in computer science and psychology. Currently he is working with an interdisciplinary team on serious exer-games for elderly. He is a distinguished member of IDEA league's doctoral school in aging and sustainability. Previously, Philipp was a researcher at the Computer Supported Learning Research Group at RWTH Aachen University.

Prof. Dr. Martina Ziefle is Professor for Communication Science at RWTH Aachen University, Germany and head of a research group at HumTec (Human Technology), an interdisciplinary project house at RWTH Aachen University, funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German federal and state governments. HumTec aims at fostering high-level interdisciplinary research between the humanities/social sciences and the engineering/natural sciences. Martina received a diploma in psychology from the university of Würzburg and the PhD in psychology from the Unviersité of Fribourg, Switzerland.
Martina Ziefle's research at HumTec addresses human factors in different technology types and using contexts, taking demands of user diversity into account. Her methodological competence regards the experimental and empirical evaluation of human computer interaction. A special research focus is directed to the usability of mobile devices, which are increasingly used in novel contexts, e.g. in the eHealth field. In addition to teaching and directing research on campus, Prof. Ziefle leads various projects funded by industrial and public authorities, dealing with the interaction and communication of humans with technology. Her main research concern is to shape technology innovation in ways that technology development is truly balanced with the human factor.

Dr. Hannah Marston is a post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Movement and Sport Gerontology, at the German Sport University, Cologne. Currently, Hannah is working on an EU-funded project (iStoppFalls) with six additional consortium partners (Austrian Institute of Technology, Neuroscience Research Australia –Sydney, University of Siegen, Kaasa-Dusseldorf, Philips-Netherlands and Institute of Biomechanics-Valencia). Hannah has several areas of research interests which include: gender, rural ageing, gerontology, age cohorts (baby boomers, oldest old (85+), centenarians etc.) HCI, video games/theory/design/engagement (technology), social networking, rehabilitation and tele-health technologies.
Previously, Hannah was elected by members of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) to represent the emerging scholar and professional organization (ESPO), the student arm of the organization as the Technology Chair. Additionally, while undertaking this role, Hannah also represented the study body on the membership committee. Furthermore, she has been an active member of the student body for the British Society of Gerontology (BSG) and at present, Hannah is working with three colleagues from University of Kentucky, Eindhoven University of Technology and Syracuse University in setting up the student chapter for the International Society of Gerontechnology (ISG). Hannah has actively volunteered to review papers for several conferences (GSA, BSG, CHI, ISG) and is currently a member of the editorial board for the Computer Games Journal.

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