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Mon 11 Oct 2021 15:20 - 15:30 - Lowering the Floor for Creative Expression Chair(s): John Grundy

Villanelle is an interactive fiction authoring tool designed to support autonomous non-player characters, or “character AI.” Character AI is notoriously challenging for interactive fiction authors to develop, especially for authors approaching interactive fiction from a writing rather than programming background. This paper describes a participatory design process in which we assess the author experience with Villanelle and build a new tool iteration to support their needs. The results of our first user study demonstrate the strong potential of Villanelle’s incorporation of behavior trees as an easy-to-learn computational model for character AI, but they also indicate syntax challenges for inexperienced programmers. Consequently, we developed a block-based programming interface for Villanelle and recruited a new set of study participants to evaluate this iteration using the same study instruments. The results indicate improvements in Villanelle’s usability and creativity support for inexperienced programmers.

Mon 11 Oct

Displayed time zone: Central Time (US & Canada) change

15:00 - 15:40
Lowering the Floor for Creative ExpressionResearch Papers
Chair(s): John Grundy Monash University
15:00
10m
Paper
VREUD - An End-User Development Tool to Simplify the Creation of Interactive VR ScenesFull paper
Research Papers
Enes Yigitbas Paderborn University, Germany, Jonas Klauke Paderborn University, Sebastian Gottschalk Paderborn University, Gregor Engels Paderborn University
15:10
10m
Paper
Preserving Hand-Drawn Qualities in Audiovisual Performance Through Sketch-Based InteractionFull paper
Research Papers
Samuelle Bourgault University of California Santa Barbara, Jennifer Mary Jacobs University of California, Santa Barbara
15:20
10m
Short-paper
Interactive Fiction Creation in Villanelle: Understanding and Supporting the Author ExperienceShort paper
Research Papers
John Bacher North Carolina State University, Chris Martens North Carolina State University
15:30
10m
Short-paper
Scaffolding Game Design: Towards tool support for planning open-ended projects in an introductory game design classShort paper
Research Papers
Alexander Card North Carolina State University, Wengran Wang North Carolina State University, Chris Martens North Carolina State University, Thomas Price North Carolina State University