Masters Degrees (Computer Science and Informatics)
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Browsing Masters Degrees (Computer Science and Informatics) by Subject "Computer games"
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Item Open Access A study to determine if experience with mouse-orientated computer games enhances the value that a user draws from an office package in a GUI environment(University of the Free State, 2006-05) Nel, Wynand; Blignaut, P. J.English: Computer use is transforming the lives of many South Africans and is fast changing the way organisations communicate and do business. It also means that thousands of people in South Africa, from different cultures, races and age groups, are coming into contact with and using computers, either at home, at school or university, at the office and even in shopping malls. In order for a user to become computer literate he/she needs to know how to use the computer application effectively. This can only be achieved if he/she knows, inter alia, how to use the computer mouse as an input device. It has been noticed that many previously disadvantaged students (this includes all people that were discriminated against according to race and include all black and coloured people) have no idea of how to use a computer mouse. Even after they have been shown how to hold and move the mouse, many of them still struggle for some time to use the mouse effectively. They find it difficult to master the movement of the mouse cursor and they struggle to click the mouse buttons. Such a user may fall behind the rest of the students in a computer literacy class and often hinders the progress of the class as the lecturer has to give special attention to the struggling individual. The main focus of this study was to determine how long it takes a person to learn how to use a computer mouse effectively, and also, specifically in terms of mouse skills, whether mouse-orientated computer games enhance the value that a user draws from an office package in a graphical user interface environment. The study was done in two phases. In phase one the students played six mouse-orientated computer games. Three questions were investigated in this phase: - Does race play a significant role? - Do difficulty levels play a significant role? - Does computer use frequency play a significant role? Phase two of the study focused on only three of the computer games used in phase one, and also on Microsoft Word tests. Six questions were investigated in this phase: - Is there a difference between the average total completion times for the two MS Word tests within a session? - Is there a difference in the average total completion times between the different sessions? - Is there a difference between the average total marks for the MS Word tests in any session? - Is there a difference in the average total marks between the different sessions? - Does the student's score in any of the three games remain constant through different attempts and sessions? - Is there a correlation between the score that a user obtains in one of the games and the total completion time for the MS Word test in the different sessions? Various statistical tests were done on the captured data to answer the above questions. The tests included the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), Tukey's test for the honestly significant differences and Spearman's correlation. This study proved that playing mouse-orientated computer games improves a user's fine motor skills and enhances his/her computer mouse hand-eye coordination. Furthermore it proved that three of the six mouse-orientated computer games enhanced the value that the users drew from the MS Word tests. A positive relationship between the scores of the games and the completion time of the MS Word tests was encountered indicating that a high score in the games compared with a short completion time in the MS Word tests. The games provide a relaxed and enjoyable environment for users to improve their computer mouse skills, and users are able to gain more value from an office package within a short time.Item Open Access The usability of natural user interfaces for gameplay(University of the Free State, 2015) Fouche, Rouxan Colin; Beelders, T. R.; De Wet, L.English: This study aimed to determine to what extent the usability of a two dimensional game was influenced by the use of a Natural User Interfaces (NUI) as opposed to a traditional keyboard and mouse combination. Two multimodal NUIs were investigated during the study. The first NUI combination (BCIG) made use of the Peregrine gaming glove for the activation of commands, combined with the Emotiv’s accelerometer for control of the cursor. The second NUI combination (BCIF) made use of facial expression recognition, offered by the Emotiv Brain Computer Interface (BCI), as a method of command activation in combination with the Emotiv’s built-in accelerometer for cursor control. A shooting genre game was developed and three tasks were included during development to simulate gaming actions. The first task used only stationary targets, the second task used predictable moving targets, whereas the third task made use of unpredictable moving targets. Since the Emotiv BCI allows for customisation of the accelerometer sensitivity settings, a pilot study was conducted to determine whether the low, medium or high sensitivity setting would provide the best cursor control. The low sensitivity resulted in the fastest gameplay overall as well as the least number of errors. It could thus be concluded that the lowest setting is the optimal setting since it provided the most efficient control for three out of the four metrics tested. After implementing this result, user testing, which involved 5 sessions per participant (n=18), was conducted. Data for three metrics was gathered during user testing, which included data on effectiveness, efficiency and learnability. Post-test questionnaires were administered to assess the level of user satisfaction with each NUI. The results of this study indicated that there is a difference between the usability of the traditional input combination, the keyboard and mouse, and the two NUIs investigated in this study. With regard to the effectiveness and efficiency metrics the traditional input combination was found to be the best, closely followed by BCIG. The three interfaces showed dissimilar levels of improvement, with the traditional keyboard and mouse combination showing the least, followed by BCIG, while the best improvement was noticed for BCIF. By analysing the subjective data gathered from post-test questionnaires, it was found that participants initially enjoyed using BCIG, and after several sessions their level of satisfaction improved. In comparison, the participants initially experienced a slightly negative feeling towards BCIF, which then improved over several sessions to a positive overall response. In conclusion, the keyboard and mouse combination provided far more effective and efficient input, with one exception being the fast command activation when making use of the Peregrine glove, where the two interfaces compared well. It was found that a significant obstacle in the way of NUIs is the existing skill and acceptance that computer users have with the traditional interface combination. Consequently, for individuals to accept and migrate to a more natural interface the new interface will have to provide more effective and efficient input than what is already achievable with the keyboard and mouse combination.