Be a Test Subject!

Thanks to a tip by eery I found this most interesting ad. I implore my readers to follow me closely on this one. Keep reading. He found this ad in this site » Starcraft Players Wanted!

Check the date! Click on it for full picture

I magnified the picture so the address was visible and I followed it to this site
» Interactive Cognition Lab.

I was left scratching my head with one of those April’s fools feeling only to find that the site is for real. Baffled, I read more about it and found some extremely intriguing articles, at least from my perspective. These guys are doing research on several ongoing projects, all related to the study of how the mind interacts with its environment. They are funded by a very interesting combination of sponsors: the Office of Naval Research, national Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (all U.S organizations).

How good are annotated videos at improving shared understanding? We test annotated videos as the medium for passing the bubble in an interrupted game: a new player resumes the game after attending an annotated video.Apparently as part of their research they are using Starcraft as one of their tools in one of their experiments. Mystifed even more, I watched a very interesting video explaining their research that you can find in this page » Passing the Bubble in Starcraft.

If you have broadband you just have to watch this video. It may not seem funny but you will not believe your eyes. The test subjects are "skilled" starcraft players and in the video you see at a point how one is paid for his work. Check out also the hand positions of one of the "skilled" test subjects. One of them has his left hand glued to the arrow keys which made me bust a rib laughing. The funniest part does not end there and is when you see the researcher sits down for a good game of Starcraft at the very end of the video. His hidden astute message did not escape me. How did he pull all this off?
My hat off to him!

After watching the video I read a little more and I will quote their objectives.Our specific research aim is to determine how and when to use a collection of annotation techniques to effectively share situational awareness and understanding, among geographically distributed team members. The situational awareness we are trying to pass is strategic, tactical, descriptive of environmental conditions and future plans. The users of this knowledge in real world contexts are decision makers (commanders), analysts, and task teams who are coming on duty, particularly when they cannot be face to face with each other. It is widely assumed that as video comes online, whether from cameras mounted in helmets or cameras in AUV’s, information analysts and the decision makers they support will find it useful to add annotations. Yet little if anything is known about how to do this well. When are decision-makers best advised to use static annotations, when should they use dynamic annotations? Which form of annotation is cognitively most effective? Presumably the representation that is best depends on the job it is to perform. Our goal in these studies is to simulate realistic planning contexts in order to determine how planners and analysts should annotate stills and videos to make better decisions.Dear me and I thought we took this game too seriously. These guys are are getting research money to play Starcraft, so much of it they can even pay "test subjects" money to play starcraft and talk about starcraft.

Live in the area and want to apply? Write an e-mail to: [email protected]

The guy behind much of this work is David Kirsh, you can find his bio here » David’s Bio. Here is a picture of him. He is the Lab and Project team leader.

The guy that shows up in the video is Andy Guerrero who is the peon (or brain?) behind the experiment using Starcraft. I have a two new heroes: David Kirsh and Andy Guerrero. How they pulled all this off is beyond me, but they have to be masters. They makes us all look like newblars. There you have them, whole research lab for them, money coming in rolls, top notch PCs, first person videos of their opponents playing, hack free environment and at the same time they get credits or degrees from their university for "serious" research.

Ok that’s it, I can honestly say I have seen it all today. I have found many, many excuses of why adults play Starcraft but this one has got to be one of the funniest ever. And the test subjects.. LOL. There is a serious and maybe sad side to all this research; and I have a pretty good idea where some of it ends up which is why they have U.S Naval Research funding.

Alright, I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I am off to packing and getting ready for the WCG event. I go now with a humble feeling after watching the above masters.

Links
Adrenaline.ucsd.edu - Funniest and most Serious $hit Ever