BrettFajen, PH.D., University of Connecticut, 1999
Brett Fajen is an assistant professor of cognitive science. His research focuses on visual perception and the control of action in the performance of both routine and skilled tasks. Much of his research on perception and action is conducted in the context of automobile driving, using a fixed-base driving simulator to investigate issues such as steering and collision detection and avoidance. He recently developed and taught new courses on Human Factors and Automobile Driving, Motor Control and Coordination, and Perception and Action, and has published articles in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, and International Journal of Computer Vision.
Fajen also conducts research using virtual reality and is in the process of setting up a large-area, immersive virtual reality facility in which users can navigate through virtual environments wearing a wide field-of-view, stereoscopic, head-mounted display.
RogerGrice, PH.D., Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1987
Roger Grice is a clinical associate professor of technical communication and interface design. He is a Fellow of the Society for Technical Communication (STC) and Assistant to the STC President for Outreach. He is a senior member of IEEE and past president of IEEE's Professional Communication Society. He is also a member of ACM, including SIGDOC and SIGCHI. He has received STC's Jay R. Gould Award for Excellence in Teaching Technical Communication and IEEE Professional Communication Society’s Alfred N. Goldsmith Award for Contributions to Engineering Communication.
Grice is retired from IBM, and now conducts HCI research as a member of the Rensselaer faculty, as well as teaching on-campus and distance-education courses on human-computer interaction, communication design for the World Wide Web, information usability, and technical communication.
Grice is working on a project to measure the effects of selected elements of interactive interfaces on perception and performance for a set of related game products. Follow-up to this project will examine ways to quantify and predict the effects of interface variations.
KatherineIsbister, PH.D., Stanford University,
Katherine Isbister is Associate Professor of Communication in the
Department of Language, Literature and Communication, and an
Associate of the Social and Behavioral Research Laboratory.
Isbister's research focus is social psychological and affective
approaches to HCI, with special attention to games and other leisure
and social technologies. She is the Director and Founder of the Games
Research Laboratory housed in the SBRL. Initial studies in the lab
have explored the social and physical aspects of party games such as
DDR. Isbister has presented insights from this research at the annual
Game Developers Conference and at the DiGRA (Digital Games Research
Association) conference.
Before joining the RPI faculty, Isbister developed and taught a
course in Stanford University's HCI series--Designing Characters for
Computer Games--now part of Rensselaer's games curriculum. Her book
on the subject, entitled Better Game Characters by Design -- A
Psychological Approach, was released in 2006 by Morgan Kaufmann. The
book was nominated for Game Developer Magazine's Frontline award.
Isbister has also created and exhibited games-related artwork in
venues including San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts;
Toronto's Design Exchange; and San Jose, California's Works Gallery.
See www.simgallery.net for an overview of this artwork which is a
collaboration with sculptor Rainey Straus.
Isbister is a part of the European Network of Excellence project
HUMAINE, devoted to evolving appropriate usability and evaluation
strategies for assessing affective interfaces. As part of this work,
she has an ongoing part-time research appointment with the Royal
Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. Outcomes of this line
of research have included a 2006 CHI full paper nominated for best
paper, and a 2007 special issue of the International Journal of Human
Computer Studies. In 1999, Isbister was selected as one of MIT
Technology Review’s 100 Young Innovators most likely to shape the
future of technology.
RobertKrull, PH.D., University of Wisconsin, 1973
Robert Krull is a professor of communication and director of masters' programs in communication. He has conducted research on electronic performance support systems such as Web-based documentation and online tutorials and on user interfaces and print-based documentation. He also has studied educational television programs and has taught graduate-level distance courses in HCI for nearly 10 years.
Krull has won awards for his research from the IEEE Professional Communication Society and the Society for Technical Communication. He has also won the Jay R. Gould Award for instruction in technical communication and the Goldsmith award for his contributions to engineering communication. His research has been supported by corporations and the federal government. He has conducted studies of color and highlighting in online interfaces, user access of online help systems in three releases of a visual programming language, and online tutorials and wizards for integrated office software. His current research focuses on using appropriate visual representations to guide the completion of complex procedural tasks.
Kathleen Ruiz is an Associate Professor of Electronic Arts at Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute where she develops and teaches courses in simulation, experimental
game design, photography, sculpture, and emerging genres. She is a founding
member of the ErGoGenics
Game Research Group designing games for fitness, fun and education. She
is currently working on her Ph.D. at the European Graduate School in simulated
perspective and perception.
Kathleen Ruiz is an internationally exhibiting media artist who creates simulations,
games, sculpture and photography. Her work explores issues about perception,
behavior, interaction and the confluence of the imaginary and the real. Her
invites inquiry into how conceptual constructs are built and how they serve
to shape ethics and power. Ruiz poses questions about the oxymoron of virtual
violence, catharsis, and desensitization in simulated space. Her work portrays
the promise of technology as well as its frightening, fascinating and humorous
contradictions. She presents simulations which open up interactive, multi dimensional
game space as a place for resonating ideas physically, intellectually, spiritually
and emotionally. Her work provides us with simulated places where multiple viewpoints
can be explored and expanded, not only through choice, but also through space
itself as she challenges us to simultaneously see the perspectives of observer,
observed and process of observation.
www.rpi.edu/~ruiz
Kathleen is the recipient of the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Visual Arts Residency
Award, a Connecticut Council on the Arts Award, the New York City Department
of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Commission, the New York State Council on
the Arts exhibition grant, the Experimental Television Center Grant and the
New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artist award. Her work was recently
sponsored by Sony Computer Entertainment.
Kathleen’s art has been exhibited at numerous galleries and museums in
the United States, Mexico, Europe, South America, and Asia and has been reviewed/published
in the New York Times, Aperture, Art News, ARTI, Jornal do Brasil, The College
Art Journal, The MIT Press, Reuters Video News International, Computer Graphics,
Yale University Art Gallery, Wired, USA Today, arteTV, Kultur:Deutsche Welle,
TeknoKultura, and others.
JamesWatt, PH.D., University of Wisconsin, 1973
James H. Watt is a professor of communication and information technologies and chair of the Language, Literature, and Communication Department. He is the coauthor of two books (Watt & Vandenberg, Research Methods for Communication Sciences; Watt & VanLear, Dynamic Patterns in Communication Processes), and over 70 research articles, book chapters, technical reports, and papers. He has served on the editorial board of Communication Research, Progress in Communication Science, Journal of Broadcasting, and Communication Quarterly. His research interests center on new communication technologies, HCI, computer-mediated communication and marketing communication.
Watt has recently completed a study that developed of a measure of visual fatigue and attention dispersal in computer display users, based on dynamic eye gaze patterns. He is working on two, on-going research projects. The first is development and testing of new measures of advertising effectiveness and Web site navigation predictors that account for the active nature of Web advertising audiences. This research is producing an emerging theory of audiences' responses to interactive advertising that is markedly different from traditional mass media advertising theory. The second project is the development of an asynchronous Web-based videoconferencing system that allows participants to carry out discussions at a distance using inexpensive Web cams, while not requiring that they be online simultaneously. The software being developed combines asynchronous contributions into a "pseudo-real time" playback stream that gives the experience of a synchronous discussion being held in real time.
Watt is a founding partner in two companies: Information Analysis Systems Corp. (Mansfield, CT) that provides marketing and communication research consulting and Swift Interactive Technologies (Hopkinton, MA) that provides Web survey research services, and specialized computer software for survey research data collection, analysis and modeling. He also serves as a frequent research consultant to information technology, financial services, and media firms.
The SBRL promotes cross-disciplinary research efforts by providing a space for interaction among researchers of differing backgrounds and training. It is located in the Winslow Building, which is adjacent to the Rensselaer campus on the West side of 8th Street. Learn more
