Reading #24: Games for Sketch Data Collection (Johnson)

Comment Location:
http://ayden-kim.blogspot.com/2010/12/reading-24-games-for-sketch-data.html

Summary:
The author attempts to incorporate the fact that there are multiple ways to draw the same "picture".  A person can draw the sun or the moon in a variety of different ways.  People will draw different based on a text description.  The author introduced 2 games to collect sketches based on certain information (such as a text description) to enable future researchers obtain sketch data.  The 2 games are Picturephone and Stellasketch.  Picturephone gives the sketchers a description and allows them to draw it.  The judgment of the sketch's similarity to the original text description is rated by a 3rd party of humans.  Stellasketch is a computer version of Pictionary.

Discussion:
The author brings up some good points.  There are many ways of drawing many shapes; a stick figure can be drawn in 720 different ways, and that's a relatively simple sketch.  The author tried to make these games "engaging", meaning "fun".  I don't see that happening.  What would you rather do: play a mentally-stimulating game of Stellasketch or pick up Halo and kill people online with explosives?  The answer is a no-brainer, literally.