ATLAS PhD students Peter Gyory and Clement Zheng took home the "Innovation in Interaction Design" from the International Festival of Independent Games this weekend for their cooperative arcade survival game, HOT SWAP: All Hands On Deck. Considered the Sundance Film Festival of the videogame industry, the juried event known as IndieCade was held in Santa Monica, California, Oct. 10-12. HOT SWAP is a project of ATLAS Institute's THING and ACME Labs, directed by Daniel Leithinger and Ellen Do, respectively.

The object of the game is to survive a relentless onslaught of hostile pirate ships, which requires collaboration and efficient use of resources. These resources correspond to five available actions, actuated with separate physical input devices: a crank to raise and lower sails, a wheel for turning the rudder, a hatch for loading the cannons, a wick for firing the cannons and a pump for dousing fires. Each player has two slots on their controller for inputs; the five controllers are shared, so players must swap and trade devices to counter impending threats. "It's a noisy, fun, chaotic scramble for survival.... unlike any game I've ever played," said one player, after trying the game for the first time. 

The game is featured at the IndieCade . The award celemony can be viewed on  (starts at 1:47:25).

The interchangeable controllers were designed with Mechamagnets, an innovative design platform developed by Clement Zheng for rapidly prototyping haptic and functional physical interfaces through desktop 3D printing and embedded static magnets.

Earlier this year, Gyory and Zheng received the coveted award for HOT SWAP, from the Independent Games Festival, held during the annual Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The game was also featured in , a popular website reporting on the game industry.

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Researchers from ATLAS Institute's THING, ACME and Unstable Design labs took home "Best Paper" and "Best Pictorial" awards at the ACM conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '19), held in San Diego, June 23-28. ATLAS faculty and students also contributed four research presentations, including one by undergraduate researcher Jolie Klefeker, an engineering student majoring in Technology, Arts & Media who was previously chosen as a Grace Hopper Research Scholar.

DIS is an international and interdisciplinary conference encompassing issues related to the design and deployment of interactive systems, where designers, artists, theorists, psychologists, user experience researchers, systems engineers and many more come together to debate and shape the future of interaction systems research, design and practice.

ATLAS research presented at DIS '19:

• "MorphIO: Entirely Soft Sensing and Actuation Modules for Programming Shape Changes through Tangible Interaction," authored by Ryo Suzuki and researchers from Keio University and The University of Tokyo in Japan, won a DIS '19 "Best Paper" award. Suzuki, an ATLAS affiliated PhD student, presented the research during the conference's Shape Changes Interfaces track. MorphIO addresses problems that researchers face when trying to program movements in soft materials: Instead of transferring compiled code from a digital screen to objects, MorphIO’s hardware enables users to program behaviors using motion-capture data gathered from physical movement and interactions. It also allows users to construct various shapes and synthesize multiple recorded motions to achieve complex movements, such as bending, gripping and walking.
• ATLAS PhD students Peter Gyory and Clement Zheng's game HOT SWAP was showcased during the Provocations and Work-in-Progress session at DIS '19, and Gyory also presented the research during the conference's poster and demo reception. One of the most original aspects of Zheng and Gyory's game, which received the coveted alt.ctrl.GDC award at this year's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, is the use of a wide range of game controllers which must be switched to perform different functions within the game. 
• Research from "Envisioning Reflective, Relaxing, and Restorative Design with ASMR," a work-in-progress paper authored by Josephine Klefeker and Laura Devendorf, was presented by lead author, Klefeker, an undergraduate TAM major and researcher in the Unstable Design Lab, during the Works-in-Progress track of DIS '19. The research was inspired by Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) media, where gentle repetitive sounds, such as listening to a whispering voice or the sounds of pages turning, elicit, for some, relaxing tingling sensations at the back of the skull that move down the back of the neck and upper spine. The research covered five research subjects who used a sonic toolkits to make recordings inspired by ASMR media. The work looks at whether the aesthetics of ASMR media can inspire the design of technology that provokes reflective thoughts and relaxation.
• “,” authored by Clement Zheng, HyunJoo Oh, Laura Devendorf, and Ellen Yi-Luen Do, won the "Best Pictorial" award at DIS '19. Lead author, Zheng, an ATLAS PhD student, presented the research during the DIS '19 Deformable and Novel Materials track. This inquiry into carbon-coated paper and kirigami structures involved investigating two variations of the paper and their electrical, haptic and visual aspects when shaped into 3D forms through cutting, folding and bending. Three applications that showcase the possibilities of this material for tangible interaction design were proposed. Researchers also used a pictorial format of working design schematics so others could explore on their own.

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Peter Gyory and Clement Zheng, PhD students and lecturers at the ATLAS Institute, both do research for the ACME and THING laboratories. Their HOT SWAP game was showcased during the Provocations and Work-in-Progress session at the Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '19) held in San Diego, June 23-28. Gyory's interests include games, XR and tangible interaction; Zheng's interests include computational design and tangible interaction.  

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[video:https://vimeo.com/303835908]

ATLAS PhD student Clement Zheng and master's student Peter Gyory will present their game, "Hot Swap: All Hands on Deck," in the alternative controllers (alt.ctrl) section at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), March 18–22 at the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. GDC is the world's largest professional game industry event, bringing together 28,000 attendees to exchange ideas and shape the future of the industry. 

One of the most original aspects of Zheng and Gyory's game is the use of a wide range of different game controllers which must be switched to perform different functions within the game. Creating such a wide collection of game controllers was made possible by Zheng's Mechamagnets design platform, which permits developers to rapidly configure and 3D print functional dials, switches and joysticks that use magnets for resistance and other haptic elements.

Hot Swap: All Hands on Deck is a collaboration between the THING and ACME labs.

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