Psychology Driven Design and Development of Agents and Virtual Environments: Magy Seif El-Nasr, NEU (IVC Seminar)

Abstract: The design and development of virtual environments is an evolving field that has been of interest to psychologists, learning scientists, health scientists, computer scientists, designers, and HCI researchers. This is due to the complexity and intricacy of the development of virtual environments and their potential impact on health, training, entertainment, and education. The approach to developing such environments is an important topic. How do you a) develop such environments and b) ensure that they have the intended psychological effect? In this talk, I propose the use of psychological theories and empirical research to develop the algorithms and procedural content of such environments, including virtual characters, rules and constraints of the environment, and its visual composition. I will discuss two current projects: The Trust Project and the Visual Analytics Project. • The Trust Project is concerned with the development of virtual characters that can procedurally simulate different personalities; this environment is used in experimental studies to understand the nature of nonverbal behaviors and their impact on trust and rapport. • The Visual Analytics Project is focused on a suite of tools for deriving psychological theories and empirical results to tune the procedural content of virtual environments. In particular, we are developing visualization systems that allow us to understand the impact of various aspects of the design on users’ behaviors – thus deriving results that allow us to tune the algorithms used to develop the virtual environments. Bio: Magy Seif El-Nasr is an associate Professor in the Colleges of Computer and Information Sciences and Arts, Media and Design, where she directs the Game User Experience and Design Research Lab. Dr. Seif El-Nasr earned her Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in Computer Science. Magy’s award winning research focuses on enhancing game designs by developing tools and methods for evaluating and adapting game experiences. Her work is internationally known and cited in several game industry books, including Programming Believable Characters for Computer Games (Game Development Series) and Real- time Cinematography for Games. Dr. Seif El-Nasr has received several awards and recognition within the Game Industry and Interactive Narrative Communities. Notably, she received Best Paper Award at the International Conference of Virtual Storytelling and several citations in industry books and magazines. Magy has also received Leadership Excellence Award and Research Excellence Award. She is on the editorial board of: IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence in Games and IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing http://www.neu.edu/magy.