Hello,
To date, design fields in the Art and Design traditions have aligned designs
with user's needs, desires, characteristics and behaviours by researching
the behaviours of users. The process has been through direct contact with
users. Methods have included surveys; in-depth interviews; anthological,
ethnographic, anthropometric and ergonomic methods along with marketing and
various forms of psychologically and behaviourally-based research
approaches. The essence of all of them, however, is the idea of gathering
information from users. Accuracy of these approaches vary and overall
accuracy (creating a design that exactly matches user characteristics) is
relatively low.
A radically new approach is emerging in games design (ACM TechNews, Friday,
June 17, 2011 see below) with an automated design method that will predict
player behaviour in role playing games. This latter is a close parallel to
designing products, services and systems for users.
This points to a potentially very significant shift in user-based design
methodology. The new approach uses research about users in a variety of
circumstances to create a computerised design tool that includes a
computerised universal model of human behaviours, responses and creative
actions. The research focus changes from designer-implemented user-research
with users to research on users undertaken outside the design process in
order to improve the user representation in the design tool.
Taking a longer picture, this is the basis for two pathways of change in
Design practice and design research. The first is a significant increase in
computer-based automation to support design activity and the potential
withering away of designer-based user-focused research undertaken as part of
the design process. The second, is potentially much more significant, the
behaviour modelling also offers the potential of modelling the activity of
designers themselves. In other words, this is a significant step on the way
to automated creation of novel designs without the use of human designers.
Already there have been significant steps down this path by Adobe, AutoCAD,
SolidWorks and other design software vendors under 'computer-assisted
design' that have automated and removed from designers the need to undertake
many design tasks. A behaviour-based modelling design software such as that
developed for game design is going down the path of automatically predicting
the behaviours of designers - including designers creative behaviours.
In terms of design PhDs, and the timelines of setting up undertaking and
marking a PhD, this suggests a good PhD area of research might be
'exploring the potential for the replacement of human creative designers by
automated systems in the next 5-10 years' or something similar.
Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM
Director. Design Out Crime Research Centre
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Social Program Evaluation Research Unit, Edith Cowan University
Member of International Scientific Council UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
From ACM TechNews, Friday, June 17, 2011
What Gamers Want: Researchers Develop Tool to Predict Player Behavior
NCSU News (06/14/11) Matt Shipman
A new method for accurately predicting the behavior of players in online
role-playing games has been developed by a team at North Carolina State
University (NCSU). The tool is able to predict what a player will do based
on previous behavior, with up to 80 percent accuracy, says NCSU's Brent
Harrison. The team developed the data-driven predictive method by collecting
data on 14,000 World of Warcraft players and the order in which they earned
their task-based achievement badges, identifying the degree to which each
individual achievement was correlated to every other achievement, and using
the data to identify groups of achievements or cliques that were closely
related. The cliques could be used to predict future behavior, and the
gaming industry could use the tool to develop new content. "This research
can help researchers get it right, because if you have a good idea of what
players like, you can make informed decisions about the kind of storylines
and mechanics those players would like in the future," says NCSU professor
David L. Roberts. The tool also could be used to help steer players to the
parts of a game they would enjoy most or to content that is suited to their
gaming style.
<http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmsrobertspredict/> View Full Article
http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmsrobertspredict/
<http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmsrobertspredict/>
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