Bwahahahahaha!

I have ethics approval. I am now allowed to conduct my experiments...

(Not that they are particularly ethically troublesome. Still, it's progress! All progress is good progress.)

Practicing on the lab

Last Friday I lead the lab group meeting for the first time since I started. I've seen other PhD students do it, and lab group members often 'use' the lab group as a testing ground for ideas and presentations, or if they have something they want to talk through. I am in the process of trying to write the questionnaire to use as my main data-gathering tool, the tool that will hopefully provide me with the vast majority of my data, so I'm a little anxious about it. Perfect for lab group feedback!

I thought pretty carefully about the structure I wanted to use. It would have been quite easy to present the games, the theory I'm looking at, and then asked them to look at the survey and lead into a discussion. I didn't do that because I felt knowing what I was looking for would affect the way they read the questionnaire. Instead I presented a little bit on three games I'm going to be looking at, then I asked them to read the questions. When the discussion around that got to the point where I felt answering the questions needed it, I went back to my slides and introduced more specifically the differences in the games (and introduced the fourth - a variant on the online game we're writing), and how I expect those differences to influence the team cohesion amongst the players.

Picking the point to go back to the theory was a little tricky, but I think it was worth doing it that way. I got some very useful feedback, some around the use of specific words, but also about thinking about who will be potentially filling out the survey. It may be that a reasonably high percentage may not have English as a first language, so some of the subtleties of the statements I've put together may be lost. That's a point that I (in my privileged English-speaking way) hadn't considered! There were a couple of contentious statements, but actually only the ones that I was already not particularly happy with, so that's not so bad. 

The other thing I've taken from the experience is that I'm reasonably confident of my background theory. I feel I can talk about it coherently, and pull the reading I've done into a shape that makes sense of what I'm looking for and at. While the lab group is a reasonably safe environment to practice in, the flip side of that is that these are my closest colleagues. If I look foolish in front of them, I still have to see them regularly for the next two years. Plenty of people have said it's actually the audience they get most nervous about - not just my lab group (who are all perfectly nice, polite, interesting and interested people) but close colleagues in general. So coming away feeling more confident was a definite plus. 

I actually feel like that was quite an important step. Now, back to that questionnaire!

Presenting style

There's a kind of meta game to going to conferences, and that's looking at presentation styles and slide design. Looking back over my notes from multi.player, I have left myself all sorts of comments about the speed of the presentation, the slide design, the slide contents etc. 

More recently I went to dConstruct, which is not an academic conference. It aims to be an inspirational one, with a theme to talk around rather than a specific technology to discuss and learn about. The speakers are professionals who also do a lot of presenting at conferences. I found it fascinating to see the differences in approach.

By and large, the slides were much better at dConstruct (granted at a design-oriented conference you'd hope for good slide design). There was less reliance on them, and less data displayed. In Don Norman's case, he didn't use slides at all and I don't think the presentation suffered for that. In Matthew Sheret's talk, the slides and more particularly how he moved between them (he'd hacked a toy sonic screwdriver) were a key part of the talk, but didn't distract from what he was saying. 

On the other hand, the academics had a much more rigid structure to their talks that in at least a few cases made them much clearer than those at dConstruct: 

1. Background of topic
2. Research questions coming from that background
3. Methodology used to explore research questions
4. Results and discussion.

Just like a paper, or a poster, or... well, most academic presentation I guess! 

So what have I learnt? From my time with American Express as well as what I've seen at conferences, I try to put as little as possible on my slides. They should not make sense without me there to talk around them. Putting tables of data on the slides doesn't work because a) it's almost impossible to make them legible and b) they distract people from what I'm saying. Use slides to show people things you can't say, so a picture (SINGLE picture, easy to see), not necessarily quotes. Have a structure so you know what your overall story is, although perhaps make it slightly less obvious in the talk than standing there and reading through it. 

Stylistically, dark backgrounds with light text is more robust if your room is too light. Talk at a reasonable pace, not everyone speaks English as a native and there's no need to pound people. Stay on topic - random 'surprise' slides are only really funny once. Test any tech on a machine other than the one you created the presentation on, just to make sure.

I think you have two goals as a conference presenter. You are trying to be interesting and informative (and I mean you, not your slides). If I can crack that, I'll be doing well!

Gamer identity

One of the things that lept out at me from all of the presentations at multi.player 2011 was talk of the gamer. There didn't really seem to be a single definition of what a gamer is - some people seemed to define it as anyone who played any digital games (often further sub-dividing that category based on either time spent or what types of games they play) whilst others just asked people whether they self-identified as a gamer. 

I find that second approach fascinating. The gamer stereotype as portrayed in popular culture is of an adolescent, over-weight, socially inept boy who plays in a darkened room. Gamers may like to believe that that stereotype is changing, but the reaction I got from some of my friends when I mentioned I was playing World of Warcraft says otherwise.

I've been looking at social identity theory. The basis of the theory is that we have subtly different identities based on the groups that we perceive ourselves to be a member of, and whichever is most salient at the time determines the way we act. So if I in a lab meeting, I will react to situations as I believe a lab member ought to, whereas if I'm at a cricket match my behaviour will be slightly different. Chances are it will be an unconscious switch. The key thing is "as I believe the group member ought to". I am picturing the 'perfect' group member, and modelling my behaviour on the way they react. 

There have been various experiments in papers I've read to establish the effects of this in computer-mediated communication (e.g. Spears et al, 1990; Reicher et al, 1995) and a fair few in face-to-face stuff too (e.g. Brewer, 1991; Ellemers et al, 1999). They do seem to set the salience of the group identity or the individual's identity by seemingly innocuous statements in the experimental instructions. I would therefore suggest that by asking people whether or not they are gamers, you could easily be pushing them into using a gamer identity to for the rest of the study. 

For example, Rachel Kowert is studying whether or not gamers really are socially inept. She got people to fill out the entire social skills indicator, and compared the results for gamers vs non-gamers. She found that there were differences, but only in specific areas - including reading body language. She did mention one of the potential causes was that the gamers were conforming to stereotype. I'm not sure when she asked them if they were gamers, it would be interesting to see if that question was at the end of the survey, would you get different answers? Maybe if you asked them how many hours a week they spend playing digital games? It would be interesting to marry the response to 'are you a gamer' to even how many hours they play, let alone going back to the social skills indicator responses. 

Lina Eklund did a study talking to students about the way they played games with their families. She mentioned that she found the gamers she spoke to "very reflexive". They kept describing how their gaming helped them, and called it a hobby - a much more positive word for most non-gamers. Ellemers et al (1999) found that if the group was self-selected (as these gamers seem to have done) members will display strong group loyalty even if the group does not have a positive image to outsiders. I think this suggests that gamers are aware of the negative images associated with their passtime, and try to justify it with their comments. Theory suggests that non-gamers (being still in the majority) would not feel such a strong group membership if at all.

Another common finding was that it was difficult to track down enough female participants in studies. I had a thought that because the social identity of gamer is generally male, perhaps most women don't identify with that? I did ask a couple of women if they would consider themselves gamers - one I know plays casual games for around 5-7 hours a week, and one I know plays games like WoW, Rift, etc. Both said no. The casual player felt she didn't play the right kind of games, and interestingly the other said she didn't feel she played seriously enough to use the name for herself. Neither said "but gamers are boys"! It's a long way from being a representative sample, but raises some interesting points about what people believe a gamer really is.

I'm finding the social identity theory fascinating (if slightly hard-going in places), and I've enjoyed speculating on this stuff. I'm a little concerned I have a hammer and suddenly everything's a nail! I need to keep reading... 

[Brewer, M. B. (1991). The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17(5), 475-482. doi:10.1177/0146167291175001

Ellemers, N., Kortekaas, P., & Ouwerkerk, J. W. (1999). Self-categorisation, commitment to the group and group self-esteem as related but distinct aspects of social identity. European Journal of Social Psychology, 29(2-3), 371-389. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1099-0992(199903/05)29:2/3<371::AID-EJSP932>3.0.CO;2-U

Reicher, S. D., Spears, R., & Postmes, T. (1995). A Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Phenomena. European Review of Social Psychology, 6(776502344), 161-198. doi:10.1080/14792779443000049

Spears, R., Lea, M. & Lee, S., 1990. De-individuation and group polarization in computer-mediated communication. British Journal of Social Psychology, 29(2), p.121-134.]

multi.player 2011

Last week I went off to Stuttgartfor three days to attend the multi.player 2011 conference at the University of Hohenheim. I've been to a few professional conferences, but this was my first academic one. It's been about 18 years since I was last in Germany too, so my German is more than a little rusty (the conference language was English, it was just the getting around that was worrying me!). 

I had a brilliant time. It was a multi-disciplinary affair, with psychologists and sociologists much more prevelent than computer scientists (although honestly, I'm not quite sure where I sit. We're definitely the softer end of computer science, although the amount of time I spend coding puts me firmly in the technical camp. Perhaps a topic for a later post!). I heard a really wide range of talks on diverse topics including gaming addiction, the effects of rule changes on socialising, co-located playing, and (eventually) board games. I met some really interesting people from a range of places. I came across techniques from different disciplines that I hadn't come across before. 

As a result of 2.5 days of non-stop games research input, I feel like I've developed some clearer feel for where my research sits, a little bit more of what I'm actually interested in finding out, and perhaps some ideas for how to even get there. I didn't feel like a fish out of water, the reading I've done meant that I could hold my own in conversations and maybe even had some interesting ideas to add. I also got a real buzz out of it. I do love new ideas. Gets me all revved up to get back on with my work! 

I am slowly writing up my notes from most of the presentations I attended on our brain dump blog, but I do anticipate that there will be a couple of more generic posts pulling in bits and bobs over the next week here as I digest. 

More photos of Hohenheim and Plieningen can be found here - but it's just houses and greenery, no people. Seems I was too busy chatting to get my camera out when there were people around!