Me, briefly

“Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t mat­ter and those who mat­ter don’t mind.” — Dr. Seuss

I am an Assistant Professor for HCI and Game Science at the Faculty of Business and Information Technology at University of Ontario Institute of Technology (UOIT). Before that I worked as a post­doc­toral asso­ciate researcher in the inter­ac­tion lab of the University of Saskatchewan in Canada on affec­tive com­put­ing in games and player expe­ri­ence eval­u­a­tion. I have a Ph.D. in game devel­op­ment and love to work in human-computer interaction.

Professional mem­ber­ships I have include the ACM SIGCHI, the IEEE Task Force on Player Satisfaction Modeling, the IEEE Game Engineering Special Interest Group, and the Nordic Game Research Network.

Research Interests

HCI & Gaming

Player-Game Interaction

I develop new inter­ac­tion modal­i­ties for affec­tive gam­ing, using novel nat­ural inter­ac­tion tech­nique with motion recog­ni­tion and sen­sor input. I also analyse user inter­ac­tion in enter­tain­ment sys­tems often with ques­tion­naires, inter­views, and phys­i­o­log­i­cal sen­sors (e.g., brain­waves, mus­cle and skin con­duc­tance sen­sors, eye tracking).

Affective Computing

Affective Computing

I am work­ing on sys­tems that rec­og­nize the phys­i­o­log­i­cal state of the user and develop appro­pri­ate sys­tem responses for a more nat­ural inter­ac­tion. Emotion recog­ni­tion enables us to develop sys­tems that are more engaging.

Game Design & Gamification

Game Design

I am inter­ested in game design and devel­op­ment method­olo­gies, espe­cially game design atoms or build­ing blocks. This includes using game design ele­ments, as gam­i­fi­ca­tion and play­ful design, for desk­top software.

Data Analysis & Triangulation Tools

Data Analysis Tools

I develop meth­ods and tools for eval­u­at­ing player emo­tion and atten­tion, game met­rics, teleme­try, track­ing, eval­u­a­tion, and for visual analy­ses of player behav­ior. Most of these tools allows quick insights into player behavior.

Gameplay Experience

Player Experience

I am an advo­cate for game user research and user expe­ri­ence meth­ods to improve the game design process. I have also worked on the­o­ret­i­cal mod­els for under­stand­ing game­play or player experience.

Player Psychology

Psychology of Gaming

I have stud­ied moti­va­tional and learn­ing effects of games that are cre­ated for pur­poses other than pure enter­tain­ment. I am also inter­ested in emo­tional ben­e­fits of engage­ment in gam­ing and cog­ni­tive processes such as atten­tion and aware­ness in col­lab­o­ra­tive gaming.