Ciocarlan et al (Ciocarlan, 2018), developed a wellbeing game that utlised some of Cialdini's well-known principles of influence and persuasion (Cialdini 1984) to persuade players to perform real-world acts of kindness.  The artefact was used to address a number of research questions including the impact on subjective wellbeing.  Although this was a significant piece of ongoing research, the artefact they used would make an interesting muse for a Minecraft mod.  Although Ciocarlan et al's results were inconclusive, the results could be used as a steer to scope-down to something achievable in the timescale for a Computing project.

This would be a DBT project, so research on the effectiveness of the artefact in behaviour change would NOT be required.

Experience of Minecraft modding, as well as keen interests in Persuasion Psychology and Positive Psychology would be needed to do something worthwhile in the timescale available to you.  Are you persuaded?

Due to the ubiquitous and pervasive nature of mobile devices they are prone to being exposed to a wide variety of potentially hazardous environments and situations. There is a growing interest in being able to monitor and detect exposure to such environments. An example of this is the inclusion of water ingress detectors in many mobile devices that change colour when exposed to water. 

This project aims to extend the kinds of hazards that can be detected by mobile devices. In particular it should look at impact forces and generate notifications of potentially harmful forces. The project would consist of development and evaluation of potential detection techniques using existing sensors and to develop a working prototype logging and notification application.

The project will address the issue of excess sedentary behaviours typically undertaken by gamers. The project may consists of the following:

 - Undertake a critical literature review of sedentary behaviour interventions and examine their effectiveness
 - Develop a novel technology driven sedentary behaviour intervention on gamers.
 - Evaluate the effectiveness of this newly developed intervention.

Background: When you play a video game, how do you decide where to go next? Which door to go through, or which staircase to go up. Which path to take out in the open? Does this depend on the type of the game, does it depend on your gaming experience or of your native culture? For example, previous research I have conducted shows that players when they come to a T-Junction prefer to turn left if they are UK players, but US players tend to turn right. So can we find some fundamental factors which influence how players make real-time in-game full-on choices?

Aims: (i) To create one or more levels using Unreal 4 which contain specific features to elicit a player response. (ii) To evaluate player response to the features you have created.

Objectives: for you to decide

Lit. Review: (i) In the academic year 2021-22 a number of students chose this topic as their Computing Project. It is imperative that you review their work and results. (ii) Review some technical reports from Dr.C (iii) You can get an enormous amount of information from the GDCs, and this has at least equivalent status to ‘journal articles’ for this project.

Secondary Data: This comes from published work which addresses this topic. Again, I refer you to the 2021-22 computing projects.

Primary Data: You must decide how to collect player movement. This can be done in a number of ways, e.g. (i) you could create Blueprints to log player choices, (ii) you could use the built-in feature of Unreal-4 to create movies of player actions.

Research Questions: for you to decide but must be linked to your primary data collection.

Technology: Unreal-4

Ethical Approval: You will need to complete an enhanced Ethical Approval submission, since this research involves people. A template will be provided.

This project will investigate the feasibility of using Evolutionary Computation to generate QR codes which contain aesthetically appealing patterns or shapes. 

QR codes typically appear to contain a random black and white grid of squares. However this pattern is carefully crafted to ensure that a URL can be encoded in a robust fashion. Its therefore very difficult to create a QR code with a desirable pattern or structure.

This project will attempt to create QR codes that contain patterns of black and white squares that form an identifiable pattern or shape that is aesthetically appealing. The resulting QR codes may have a significant commercial value as compared to apparently randomly generated codes.