Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThis dissertation utilizes law and society research, as well as communication advocacy, to frame analysis and offer an extra-legal solution to conflicts between modders, fans who create new content from existing videogames, and game companies. It utilizes grounded theory and the traditional legal adversarial documentary method to abstract and analyze conflict caused by a cease and desist (C&D) letter sent to Kajar Laboratories concerning Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes - Kajar's mod to Square Enix's Chrono Trigger. Through qualitative analysis of websites, forum posts, and blog comments about the C&D this dissertation discovers the grounded theory Legal Threats Break Moral Communities. Utilizing the grounded theory and legal argumentation a critique is made of proposed legal solutions. A nonlegal solution to ameliorate future conflict is then suggested as a means to satisfy both the needs of modders and game companies. In analyzing the conflict this dissertation illustrates how the threat of law stops modders, disrupts the community, and chills future mods. This dissertation reinforces a regulatory understanding of copyright law arguing limited monopolies on intellectual property serve to advance the arts and sciences. Modding, like many forms of participatory culture, promotes valuable science, technology, engineering, and math through self-learning. Mods promote the original games while also generating new art. The dissertation also shows that both regulatory and proprietary interpretations of copyright law benefit from modding. Through critique of status quo solutions and analysis of a Microsoft exemplar this dissertation suggests a generic game content usage guide as an extra-legal, feasible solution that advances the goals of all parties involved without requiring legal intervention

Doodle Health: A Crowdsourcing Game for the Co-design and Testing of Pictographs to Reduce Disparities in Healthcare Communication

Supplementing patient education content with pictographs can improve the comprehension and recall of information, especially patients with low health literacy. Pictograph design and testing, however, are costly and time consuming. We created a Web-based game, Doodle Health, for crowdsourcing the drawing and validation of pictographs. The objective of this pilot study was to test the usability of the game and its appeal to healthcare consumers. The chief purpose of the game is to involve a diverse population in the co-design and evaluation of pictographs. We conducted a community-based focus group to inform the game design. Game designers, health sciences librarians, informatics researchers, clinicians, and community members participated in two Design Box meetings. The results of the meetings were used to create the Doodle Health crowdsourcing game. The game was presented and tested at two public fairs. Initial testing indicates crowdsourcing is a promising approach to pictograph development and testing for relevancy and comprehension. Over 596 drawings were collected and 1,758 guesses were performed to date with 70-90% accuracies, which are satisfactorily high

A grounded legal study of the breakdown of modders' relationships with game companies or legal threats shake moral beds

This dissertation utilizes law and society research, as well as communication advocacy, to frame analysis and offer an extra-legal solution to conflicts between modders, fans who create new content from existing videogames, and game companies. It utilizes grounded theory and the traditional legal adversarial documentary method to abstract and analyze conflict caused by a cease and desist (C&D) letter sent to Kajar Laboratories concerning Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes – Kajar's mod to Square Enix's Chrono Trigger. Through qualitative analysis of websites, forum posts, and blog comments about the C&D this dissertation discovers the grounded theory Legal Threats Break Moral Communities. Utilizing the grounded theory and legal argumentation a critique is made of proposed legal solutions. A nonlegal solution to ameliorate future conflict is then suggested as a means to satisfy both the needs of modders and game companies. In analyzing the conflict this dissertation illustrates how the threat of law stops modders, disrupts the community, and chills future mods. This dissertation reinforces a regulatory understanding of copyright law arguing limited monopolies on intellectual property serve to advance the arts and sciences. Modding, like many forms of participatory culture, promotes valuable science, technology, engineering, and math through self-learning. Mods promote the original games while also generating new art. The dissertation also shows that both regulatory and proprietary interpretations of copyright law benefit from modding. Through critique of status quo solutions and analysis of a Microsoft exemplar this dissertation suggests a generic game content usage guide as an extra-legal, feasible solution that advances the goals of all parties involved without requiring legal intervention

Towards designing agent based virtual reality applications for cybersecurity training

Agents are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in people’s lives. There is potential for agents to help with scalability of digital learning and training. This paper presents the findings from two ideation workshops centered around designing a short interaction with a digital agent in Virtual Reality (VR), in the context of cybersecurity training. The workshop discussions were subjected to thematic analysis to extract design insights. The design insights fall into three broad categories: thematic (e.g. different metaphors to translate cybersecurity concepts), stylistic (e.g. less realistic art), and mechanical (e.g. VR gestures). These insights will guide the design and development of a VR training environment

Tradies, technology and therapy: Towards designing gameful VR environments for burn rehabilitation

Burn injuries are a significant public health challenge with the known consequences and long term problems including pain, permanent scarring and psychological trauma. Current available rehabilitation equipment is rudimentary, resource-intensive and lacks a human-centered design approach. Immersive Virtual Reality technologies may provide aid in this area, with prior studies showing positive effects that this technology has on reducing patient's physical pain, psychological trauma and improving movement. This study recognises the need for customised, measurable and goal-directed rehabilitation for burn patients. By conducting two ideation design sessions with health workers (session 1), and burn survivors and their carers (session 2), this study highlights the participants' perspectives on VR for burn rehabilitation such as the importance of patient agency, heat and healthy scarring. This work contributes core themes from survivors and health professionals to the field of design and computer human interaction that could inform future iterations of VR burn rehabilitation applications

Augmenting the design box: Virtual reality pain relief for Australian burns survivors case study

Virtual reality (VR) has demonstrated benefits in healthcare in the context of anxiety and pain management. However, this has yet to be applied broadly within the Queensland Health context with solutions that can be integrated within existing clinical workflow, and present opportunities to be of use within multiple hospital departments. We present a case study augmenting the “Design Box”, a method for human-centered design, in the context of the design of a virtual reality experience as an adjunct to standard of care for pain management in adult burns patients within the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Journey mapping, hands-on technology experience and the Design Box were used in a focus group session with researchers, burns clinicians, developers and artists. The augmented design box allowed for iterative generation of game ideas, team engagement and cohesion, and the outline of a software development and creative brief and was validated as suitable for three additional upcoming participatory design sessions with complementary participant cohorts

Choreografish: Co-designing a choreography-based therapeutic virtual reality system with youth who have autism spectrum advantages

Choreografish is a virtual reality therapeutic arts engagement leveraging participatory research and design to collaborate with young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The research team was motivated by the social anxiety some with ASD have, and the attendant difficulties accessing art forms that may actually play well to Autism Spectrum Advantages (ASA). This project was co-designed with youth with ASA to explore the use of VR and choreographic thinking to empower users and designers to engage with the arts and self-manage anxiety. This paper describes the project, and gives a brief design history of Choreografish