Designing Biofeedback for Games and Playful Applications

During the last three years we have developed several prototypes of biosignal adaptive games and playful applications. We have been primarily using pulse, heart-rate intervals (HRV), skin conductance (EDA) and respiration as adaptation sources (RESP), but we have also experience in real-time analysis of more demanding signals such as electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography (EEG). Our applications range from desktop to mobile and from single user to multiuser setups. One of the core research questions in our studies is to understand how the biofeedback mechanisms have impact on psychophysiological responses and how implicit and explicit biofeedback differs from each other. In our future studies we are going to explore inter-subject synchrony and related biofeedback effects in co-located collaborative games and applications. This position paper for CHI 2010 workshop “Brain, Body and Bytes: Psychophysiological User Interaction” describes briefly our previous research efforts, our methodologies, and our future research directions.