Developing Tools that Enhance Interactive Experiences and Their Development Porcess

Magy Seif El-NasrPenn State UniversityCollege of Information Sciences and TechnologyAbstract:
The game industry is becoming a multi-billion dollar industry with revenues overcoming those of the movie industry. Recently, thousands of people around the world camped out in front of stores for days to be the first to own a Play Station 3 and/or Nintendo Wii. As the game industry matures, the tools used by designers and developers to build such games also mature. These tools are gaining importance as they not only result in better, faster developed games, but find unforeseen and excited uses outside their "native" industry – in training, health therapy, and education. In education in particular, these tools can be used as an infrastructure for course projects, helping reinforce many computer science and math concepts through learning by design or by doing. Still, many of these tools are limited. For example, the current visual design tools used to develop these interactive experiences have several limitations: they are (1) time- and labor- intensive, (2) rigid, as they do not adapt well to changes in physical and dramatic configuration of scenes forcing designers to preset these variables, and (3) designed based on control of timing and pacing which are not static as they depend on users' actions. My research focuses on developing tools that address these problems. In this talk, I will focus the discussion on one of these tools, specifically, a lighting design tool, called ELE (Expressive Lighting Engine), that I developed based on cinematic and theatric lighting design theories. ELE addresses the aforementioned problems by adding: (i) a high-level authoring tool to cut down the content development time and (ii) a constraint optimization system built based on cinematic and theatric techniques to adapt the lighting, accounting for context, timing, and gameplay/interaction, thus presenting a better adaptable solution to a dynamic environment. Such a tool is useful for enhancing the design and development process as well as the quality of interactive experiences, which include interactive entertainment, training simulations, and health therapy environments. I have also utilized the power of such tools in my classes to emphasize learning by design. Bio:
Dr. Seif El-Nasr is an assistant Professor in College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State University, where she directs the Real-time Aesthetic and Experience Lab. She earned her Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University in Computer Science and her master's degree in Computer Science from Texas A&M University. Dr. Seif El-Nasr received several grants and awards. The awards she received include 2nd best paper award at the International Conference of Virtual Storytelling 2003, student best paper award at the Autonomous Agents conference 1999, and Leadership Excellence Award from Texas A&M University. She is on the editorial board of the Journal of Game Development, the International Journal of Intelligent Games and Simulation, and ACM Computers in Entertainment; she has chaired and organized several workshops including, American Association of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) Symposium on Artificial Intelligence and Interaction Entertainment, which has recently became its own conference AIIDE (Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment) and Design of Interactive Systems (DIS) Workshop called 'On the Process of Game Design'. She was a special theme editor for the Journal of Game Development special issue on Game Design Research. Her research work includes designing and developing tools that enhance the engagement of interactive environments used for training, education, and entertainment. She developed several classes, including Game Design and Development, Design of Immersive Environments, Interactive Narrative, and Software Engineering. In all her classes she promotes creativity and project-based learning through the use of the tools she built in her research augmented with game engines. URL: http://faculty.ist.psu.edu/SeifEl-Nasr/.

Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Nancy Levien