Research

Areas/Interests

Project Summaries

Publications

Presentations

Areas

My current research focuses on human studies involving the design of digital artifacts using games and AI as tools. Previously, I performed exploratory work in mathematical and computational modeling in ecology and human physiology mathematics.

Keywords

Human-centered computing (HCC), human-computer interactions (HCI), serious games, game design science, human and game AI interaction, computational modeling in games, ecological mathematics, and biological mathematics.

Broader Interests

I have broad interests in HCC: digital artifacts for serious objectives (for example, the use of psychotherapy applications and games for diagnosis and/or treatment of mental illness), HCI design, and human-centered cybersecurity. I am open to exploring HCC-focused projects.

Publications

2022

2021

Presentations

2021

  • OGrES Welcome! Toward a Systematic Theory for Serious Game Design, CHIPlay 2021

2020

  • Formal Game Design Frameworks, Guest Lecture for EAE 6360: Game Engineering III

2006      

  • Wild Population Augmentation from Reserve Populations, National Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics
  • A Mathematical Model for Tri-trophic Interactions, Invited speaker for the University of Utah Math Department’s Annual Awards Ceremony

2005

  • A Mathematical Model of Tri-Trophic Interactions of Predator, Prey/Herbivore, Producer, National Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics
  • A mathematical look into the interactions of a tri-trophic system, Undergraduate Colloquium for the University of Utah Math Department

2004

  • HPC Genetic Algorithm for Multiple Sequence Alignment, National Conference for Undergraduates (Poster)

2002

  • Measuring the breakdown of aspartame into its components utilizing HPLC chromatography, Intermountain Junior Science & Humanities Symposium (Poster)

Project Summaries

Current Work

Current work is being done in serious game design evaluation and theory, as well as work in novel applications of machine learning in PCG (procedural content generation) for level-based games.

Submitted for publication. More details coming soon…

On-going: OGrES and Serious Game Design

My role: PI. I am involved in every part of this research.

Project description: We used a thematic review of serious game design and serious game case study literature to create a methodology for defining the objectives of a serious game. Current work on the OGrES methodology is examining how systemizing this design step may aid game developers in the design of serious games.

Published and presented at CHIPlay 2021

CBR and Co-Creative Applications

My role: 2nd author. Aided in research methodology design, human experiment and data analysis, and writing and submitting the paper.

Project description: The plugin tool we created would tune the audio parameters based on what the experts had done in the previous three trials but did not explain what (or why) it was doing it. Some found themselves actively working against the CBR agent, while others didn’t notice the change. During the interview process, when the research team explained what the agent was doing, the experts said that it made sense what was happening, and if they had known that, they may have used it for tuning audio tracks to have a similar sound. Future work would look at adding explainability to the agent to uncover when/why experts found it a useful co-creative tool. (2nd author)

Published at ICCBR.

Exploratory Work in Biological Mathematics

I studied biological mathematics with research explorations in ecological math on animal population interactions (tri-trophic systems and wildlife population augmentation) and computationally modeled the behavior of fibrin architecture in human blood clots.

Presented at National Conference for Undergraduate Women in Mathematics (twice), Undergraduate Colloquium for the University of Utah Math Department, and one of two invited student speakers for the University of Utah Math Department’s Annual Awards Ceremony

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