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Josh M

- Research Program Mentor

PhD Doctor of Philosophy candidate

Expertise

game design, user experience research, human-computer interaction, game development, instructional design

Project ideas

Project ideas are meant to help inspire student thinking about their own project. Students are in the driver seat of their research and are free to use any or none of the ideas shared by their mentors.

Design-Based Research: Creating a (Very Small!) Game

Developing games can be research too! Through design-based research (DBR), you can make a game that has educational value, or a game that helps players contribute to science (called citizen science games), or even just a game that does something unique that hasn't been done in a game before! Making a game is a usually a huge undertaking, so this project would have a very small scope and focus on time management, workflow, design, and iteration, with a proof-of-concept outcome. Some example game ideas could be: - a puzzle game about practicing algebra - a citizen science game about identifying birds - a game you play with your toes - a story-rich game about OCD - a party game you can play on Zoom

Game-User Experience Research Study

Explore the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and games user research (GUR) with a small research study that you design. We'll go through forming a research question and hypothesis, designing a qualitative and/or quantitative experiment, collecting and analyzing data, and writing up a report. This could even result in a scientific publication! Some example research questions could be: - How can game developers avoid unhealthy, "dark", and exploitative patterns of game design? - Are games becoming more open to LGBTQ+ topics? - What do players think about moral systems in games?

Coding skills

Python, C++, C#, Unity; a bit of Godot, GameMaker, Java, MATLAB, R, HTML, C

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