AFFILIATIONS

H-STAR:  The Human-Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research Institute, is a Stanford interdisciplinary research center focusing on people and technology — how people use technology, how to better design technology to make it more usable (and more competitive in the marketplace), how technology affects people's lives, and the innovative use of technologies in research, education, art, business, commerce, entertainment, communication, national security, and other walks of life.

Media X:  A collaboration of Stanford and industry that brings together Stanford's leading interactive technology research with companies committed to technical advancement and innovation.  Media X sponsors Stanford faculty and researchers studying basic issues about the design and use of interactive technologies to influence the next generation of commerce, learning and entertainment. 

LIFE:  (Learning in Informal and Formal Environments) is an NSF funded multi-year interdisciplinary collaboration between learning scientists at Stanford University, the University of Washington, SRI International, and other institutions across the country.  The LIFE Center develops and tests principles about the social foundations of human learning in informal and formal environments, including the use of interactive technology. 

Seriosity:  A venture-backed startup that offers consulting services about how sophisticated multiplayer games will change the nature of work and is building game-inspired software for the enterprise.

CURRENT IDEAS AND RESEARCH

Serious Games:  Sophisticated multi-player computer games are engaging.  Much of modern information work is complex, repetitive and dull.  The Games at Work project considers the application of game psychology to important problems in the areas of leadership, collaboration, innovation and productivity.  The laboratory experiments and enterprise applications are summarized in a forthcoming book, Total Engagement (with J. Leighton Read).  A part of the project was a study done for IBM that examined leadership in complex games and applications to business.     

Avatars: A powerful feature of virtual worlds and games is the ability for people to represent themselves in media.  We are working on laboratory experiments that show the involvement that people have with avatars, and how that involvement shapes emotional responses, learning, memory and evaluations of media experiences.  One recent experiment looks at physiological responses to avatars using heart and skin conductance measures, and one looks at brain fMRI responses while people view avatars and their relationship to learning.   

Media Realism: What’s the different in psychological response if people think that media are presenting reality vs. a manufactured version of reality?  A long-term project, first summarized in The Media Equation (with Clifford Nass), examined numerous similarities between media and real life.  A recent experiment shows that physiological arousal increases when people think that video material is about real people rather than actors playing a role. 

Synthetic economies:  Another powerful feature of games and virtual worlds are the synthetic currencies that allow players to create a marketplace for trading game pieces and all kinds of other objects and services.  Could synthetic currencies influence real behavior?  Using a currency and banking systems developed by Seriosity (called Attent™), we tested the influence of a currency system to gain and allocate attention via email.   

Energy Efficiency and Games:  The ingredients from successful games can be used to change behavior that may otherwise be difficult to influence.  We are beginning a project with the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center to use games to link energy information with individual homes and provide engaging feedback that will lessen and redistribute energy use in homes, cars and commercial buildings.  A movie of this idea can be downloaded here or viewed on YouTube.