MASTER`S THESES

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[860 KB]	Increase Motivation by Adapting Intelligent Tutoring Instruction to Learner Achievement Goals (2011) Master`s thesis by Tony Lockhart Description will be coming soon...
[1 MB]	Vox: A Science Fiction Video Archive (2010) Master`s thesis by Joshua Cuneo Vox is a prototype of a digital research archive of science fiction (SF)videos. Using Vox, researchers and educators can search through SF television shows, films and documentaries at various levels of granularity, conduct comparative analyses and consult categorized metadata. Searchable metadata includes information regarding cast and crew, production and plot. Vox has the potential to resolve the arduous task of tracking down external media sources (including Betamax, VHS and DVD), to increase the availability of currently hard-to-find materials and to preserve videos that might be ephemeral otherwise. This prototype uses Star Trek (1966) and its spin-offs as a case study due to the shows' popularity in SF research.
[12 MB]	The Judgment Of Procedural Rhetoric (2010) Master`s project by Simon Ferrari This thesis establishes a theoretical framework for understanding virtual spaces and roleplaying in relation to Ian Bogost's theory of "procedural rhetoric," the art of persuading through rule systems alone. Bogost characterizes the persuasive power of games as setting up an Aristotelian enthymeme-an incomplete argument-that one completes through play; however, I argue that the dominant rhetoric intended by a team of game designers is subject to manipulation through player choice. Discrete structures within the play experience cause the meaning-making possibilities of a game object to pullulate in a number of directions. Procedural rhetoric is not comprehended or created when reflected back upon after play: we interrogate it, piece it together, and change it through play. If rules are how the designers express themselves through videogames, then the player expresses herself by forming a personal ruleset-a modus operandi or ethical system-in response to the dominant rhetoric. Furthermore, game space is not merely the place where this dialectic occurs; it also embodies a ruleset in the way it organizes objects and directs the flow of play. The thesis proposes a model by which games, which are "half-real" according to theorist Jesper Juul, can be judged intersubjectively-that is, in a way that accounts for the objectivity of their rulesets and the subjectivity of player experience. By fully understanding the dynamic between the three procedural influences of rules, space, and identity, we can learn more about designing persuasive game systems and enhance the possibilities of subversive play.
[155 KB]	Of humans and avatars: how real world gender Practices are brought into world of warcraft (2010) Master`s thesis by Kady Rosier This thesis proposes to look at the question of: "How do people 'do gender' when choosing their avatars online?" The thesis will also look at the underlying question of whether or not a chatter bot can be used as a potential interviewer when mass amounts of interviews are required. Gender is one of the ways we structure our society and completely omnipresent. We cannot opt out of participating in it as we are constantly performing and reaffirming it. Because of this, gender performance and choices spill over into all domains, including entertainment such as massively multiplayer online games, in both how the designers make them and what the players bring to them. Deconstructing how and why people engage in these gendered practices and choices becomes an interesting avenue of research because it allows researchers to separate some of the mental aspects of gender from some of the physical ones as players' physical bodies are not actually in the game, only in the 3D in-game avatars they have made specific choices in creating. Through the lens of the popular massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft, this thesis will utilize a user research study to understand how gender affects avatar choices. Prior research identified areas where players brought real world gender norms into the games they played. The research study will extend the research by having players identify why they made the choices they did for their avatars and how they feel about those choices.
[4 MB]	MAST (Metaphoric Adventure-Scripting Tool): A user facing tool for creating multiplayer MMO narratives (2010) Master`s thesis by Audrey Whitman For my thesis project, I examined how players interact with MMOG user development tools (excluding MMOWs/MMOVWs) to produce their own content. While MMOG content has been discussed as a) a site for discussing the cultural implications of mechanics, b) categorizing MMOG players, and c) as part of larger arguments about the state of game narrative4; very little attention has been paid to how players of these games interact with content on their own terms, and how (when given the opportunity) they might design content of their own . As an MMOG player, but only an indifferent and infrequent MMOG role-player, I became interested in the idea of re-applying the techniques of table-top role-playing to their newest generation of digital counterparts. Out of the many directions I could approach this broader topic, I am most interested in extracting a preliminary set of 'best practices' and attempting to demonstrate an application of those practices in a tool designed for 5 Boroughs (the MMOG I have been designing through the {egg}). I'm approaching this work in the context of Pearce's Communities of Play, Fine's Shared Fantasy: Role Playing Games as Social Worlds, and Mackay's The Fantasy Roleplaying Game. Tabletop role-playing games produce a unique community dynamic, which, if encouraged by the availability of digital tools, would migrate to role-play in digital environments. At the broadest level, my hypothesis is that, given a tool for creating and sharing their own narrative content, players will choose to supplement and enhance their experiences with designer-produced content with content of their own; with demonstrable effects on player movement through a finite game space. More specifically, that it is possible to extract a formal system of storytelling which is sufficiently abstract to allow for many 'types' of story, while grounding the produced stories in the context of the world they are being designed for; and, with it, foster a co-narrative relationship between the development and player community. To that end, I will develop both a set of design principles for developing user content tools, and a sample tool that follows those principles, informing my design with academic research, and industry experience. Methodologically, after establishing my set of principles, I will iteratively test paper prototypes of that design, and begin implementing its key functionality. In essence, the primary question of this project is whether a generalize-able set of user content tool 'rules' can be developed which are both usefully descriptive (allowing a designer to rule out directions of development), genre-unspecific (applicable to a variety of styles of content-driven game), and provide a useful context in which to consider user 'play flow' (helping the tool to become part of normal play for most players).
[839 KB]	Narrative Participation within Game Environments: Role-Playing in Massively Multiplayer Online Games (2010) Master`s thesis by Pauline Chan Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) present fantastic, persistent worlds and narratives for a community of players to experience through pre-defined rules, roles, and environments. To be able to offer the opportunity for every player to try the same experiences, many game developers have opted to create elaborate virtual theme parks: scripted experiences within static worlds that cannot be affected or changed through player actions. Within these games, some players have turned to role-playing to establish meaningful connections to these worlds by expanding upon and subverting the game's expectations to assume a limited sense of agency within the world. The interaction between role-players and the locations they occupy within these worlds is a notable marker of this narrative layering; specific locations inform social codes of conduct, designed by developers, and then repurposed by players for their characters and stories. Through a qualitative case study in World of Warcraft on public role-playing events, this thesis considers how the design of in-game locations inform their use for role-playing, and how locations are altered through storytelling as a result.
[6 MB]	Strip Mall Ethnography (2009) Master`s thesis by Adam Rice Strip Mall Ethnography explores the dynamic creation of urban space with a focus on strip malls. The extremely subjective nature of the project and its labeling as ethnography lends an ironic tension to the work. As a whole, Strip Mall Ethnography seeks to document one person's perspective within Atlanta strip malls and to provoke critical investigation of the tools we use to represent and engage urban spaces and so-called objective data online.
[5 MB]	Representations of the City in Video Games (2009) Master`s thesis by Bobby Schweizer In 1960, urban studies author Kevin Lynch recognized that "moving elements in a city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts." Three-dimensional video game cities are neither static environments nor stationary views; rather, they are experienced through movement, action, and play. Our experiences of new places are not developed at a glance. Instead, they are cultivated through use over time. This research strives to characterize the means by which video game players experience and understand the space of the game city during the course of play. This work utilizes games that take place in constructed versions of New York City as a case study. By focusing on the ways players navigate spaces, we can understand how they construct spatial awareness and how this space is transformed into a meaningful place of play. In order to come to this understanding, this study asks a series of questions: How are these spaces arranged? How does the player move through the space and how does the game teach spatial navigation? What actions are performed in the space and how is gameplay adapted for the city? How does the creation of narrative environments contribute to a player's identification with the space? These questions are examined within a framework of urban, cultural, and game studies. I examine techniques that are employed by video game city designers to help players navigate space and make it meaningful. Additionally, this research poses areas for future expansion and experimentation with game cities.
[911 KB]	The Identity Share Project (2009) Master`s project by Daniel Upton While many social communities exist on the web, they generally consist solely of networks of friends, family, and co-workers. Those that do offer the ability to learn about or meet other people are either dating sites or forums based around a single interest. The Identity Share Project approaches the social network from a new angle, facilitating the sharing of identities with others outside of standard networks while not limiting the connections between strangers to a matched subset. Design Document
[1 MB]	Shiftbrowse (2009) Master`s project by Abhishek Gupta ShiftBrowse is a unique browser geared towards multi-tasking, that visualizes the smaller representations of all opened web pages called Shifters, in a hierarchical, intelligent tree map, instead of conventional tabs that are placed linearly on the tab-bar and used in almost all contemporary browsers including Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera. It also introduces the concept of a ShiftList - a current page centric tabbed navigation list, showing all parents and either siblings or children of the page depending on the existence of its children. This enables using tabs for quickly navigating to web pages that may be most relevant.
[8 MB]	Geographies of the Underworld: Chthonic Embodiment in Virtual Worlds (2008) Master`s thesis by Kathryn Fletcher Underworlds exist as “real” but imaginary places, whose landscapes, denizens and conventions are created and sustained through community consensus and history as well as invention by individuals. As spiritual spaces, they stand in contrast to the material world, but connect to it through interfaces, including the biological (such as shamen, or practitioners in ecstatic states) and the topographic (such as an explicit relationship with caves). Underworlds are virtual environments that predate digital technology. With this in mind, it should not be surprising that the underworld manifests in digital virtual environments as well. It emerges sporadically at a superficial level, influencing art direction, story and setting, but the more prevalent – and interesting – presence lies at a deeper level, where chthonic poetics operate at the core of world-based video games, particularly MMOs (massive multiplayer online games).
	Conflict Engine: Privileging Drama in Drama Management (2008) Master`s project by Micah Horvat Aristotle and Freytag identify conflict as a motivator of plot progression. The plot curve they describe refers to dramatic tension, an abstract quality correlated with conflict, or crises. It is difficult to imagine authorship or interpretation of dramatic narrative without an understanding of conflict. Existing interactive storytelling systems focus on simulating complex models of semiotics, physical spaces, and the mind, but do not consider conflict as a computational primitive. Conflict Engine represents conflict as a collection of conflict objects in a story world, tracks these objects through a plot progression, and compares them to a conflict curve representing the fluctuation of conflict through a plot, in order to render interactive drama.
[35 MB]	Fast Pitch Comics (2008) Master`s project by Gray Gunter My motivation for this project comes from this deep love of sequential art and a belief in the medium`s value in communication and storytelling. From personal experience I know how complex and arduous it can be for an individual to create a comic book, regardless of the work`s scale. Similarly, I have observed how difficult it can be for unpublished comic book creators to find collaborators on a project to share the burden of its production. For those who overcome these obstacles and create a complete work of sequential art there is still the considerable problem of publishing their work and having it be read by the public.
[561 KB]	Mechanics of Cooperative Social Environments in Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplay Games (2008) Master`s thesis by Christopher Langston This project proposes a framework of game mechanics under which players of competitive online games can develop complex social structures that directly impact the evolution of communities within the game space. While many AAA titles support both cooperative and competitive play, few have attempted to integrate these two aspects of play into a single experience. Instead, games operate competitively and cooperatively in parallel, maintaining a fairly strict distinction between the two modes of play. The mechanical framework presented here attempts to bridge the gap between competition and cooperation by providing an appealing play experience through construction of complex social structures. These structures are built and sustained through conflict between players, as well as cooperation between groups of varying size. By making it mechanically appealing to create complex social structures, the game world becomes a habitat within which real-world hierarchies and political structures can be adapted to exist as player-driven entities.
[7 MB]	Tagging for TV (2007) Master`s project by Angelique Lausier In recent years, television has developed from a limited set of shows constrained by a fixed time slot into a veritable viewer`s choice of channels, shows, and times. In addition, we have seen the rise of the complex episodic series that encourages replay. This increased complexity, however, has not been met with a more sophisticated solution for navigating shows. The Internet, however, has grown into a media-rich, customizable experience for users who have become familiar with the concept of tagging items with keywords to foster the organization of a network. Broadcast has begun to merge with broadband in many forms, but viewers still have little to help them navigate through a show. Tagging for TV brings tagging from the Internet to television as a social, viewer-generated means of organizing data.
[3 MB]	Murmur (2007) Master`s project by Aimee Rydarowski Today, increasingly varied modes of data representation, coupled with accessible technological resources have democratized the field of information visualization and opened computing to new user groups
[1 MB]	Virtual IKEA: Principles of Integrating Dynamic 2D Content in a 3D Virtual Environment (2007) Master`s project by Paul Amsbary IKEA.com, with a database of thousands of furniture items and customization options, is a rich environment in which to explore the interaction framework of a complex ecommerce experience. This project is a web-based application in which consumers are present in a real-time 3D environment. The project explores the design implications and intersections between rich media 2D and real-time 3D interactive environments. The design research examines how the choices in 3D virtual spaces are reflected and visualized in the 2D components of the application and how a user transitions between a 2D navigation structure integrated with or adjacent to, a 3D virtual environment. Virtual IKEA examines the assignment of directional value to navigation movement in the environment and the relationship of those assignments in different spaces of the application. Project explores a broad range of examples, including experiments in interactive television, console video games, websites, and emerging 3D platforms.
[2 MB]	Place and Digital Media (2006) Master`s thesis by Daniel Klainbaum As interactors we often allude to a sense of presence, of "being there" when experiencing interactive artifacts. Digital technologies can create a sense of presence within a synthetic environment, that of being in a technologically mediated space. As a result, ideas of space and place are fundamental to the use of digital media. Related metaphors pervade our language and use of technology; we explore virtual worlds, surf online, and chat in rooms.
[3 MB]	Generating Comics Narrative to Summarize Wearable Computer Data (2006) Master`s project by Jason Alderman As people record their entire lives to disk, they need ways of summarizing and making sense of all of this data. Comics (and visual language) are a largely untapped medium for summarization, as they are already subtractive and abstract by nature (the brain fills in the blanks and the details), and they provide a way to present a series of everyday events as a memorable narrative that is easily skimmed. This research builds upon the work of Microsoft, FX Palo Alto Labs, ATR Labs, and others to further ground the procedural generation in the comics theory of Scott McCloud, et al.
[6 MB]	Digital Storytelling Supporting Digital Literacy in Grades 4-12 (2005) Master`s thesis by Tom Banaszewski Digital storytelling, the practice of combining personal narrative with multimedia to produce a short autobiographical movie, continues to expand its creative uses in classrooms around the world. However, teaching the actual "story process" within digital storytelling presents several challenges for teachers as it demands a combination of creative writing, basic film conventions, visual and media literacy, as well as the technical facility with the technology. Digital storytelling presents a unique opportunity for students to acquire much more than new technology skills. It enables them to represent their voices in a manner rarely addressed by state and district curriculum while practicing the digital literacy skills that will be important to their 21st century futures.
[7 MB]	Interaction Design Principles for Interactive Television (2005) Master`s thesis by Karyn Lu Interactive television (iTV) is an umbrella term used to cover the convergence of television with digital media technologies such as computers, personal video recorders, game consoles, and mobile devices, enabling user interactivity. Increasingly, viewers are moving away from a "lean back" model of viewing to a more active "lean forward" one. When fully realized on a widespread scale in the United States, our current experience of watching television will be dramatically transformed. Because iTV is a new medium in its own right, however, standards for iTV programming and interaction in the United States remain undefined.
[5 MB]	Affective Dynamics in Responsive Media Spaces (2004) Master`s thesis by Wolfgang Reitberger In this thesis computer-mediated human interaction and human computer interaction in responsive spaces are discussed. Can such spaces be designed to create an affective response from the players? What are the design heuristics for a space that allows for the establishment of affective dynamics? I research the user experience of players of existing spaces built by the Topological Media Lab. In addition to that I review other relevant experimental interfaces, e.g. works by Myron Krueger and my own earlier piece Riviera in order to analyze their affective dynamics.
[1 MB]	Revealing Code: What Can Language Teach Software? (2004) Master`s thesis by Steven Hodges In the last twenty years, computer code has emerged from obscure beginnings to occupy a rather prominent place in our culture. We can see evidence of code`s cultural presence in our everyday conversation, in the way we interact with computers and networks, and in many current advertisements. Code also occupies an important place in the study of new media; some in that field have gone so far as to call code "the language of our time." My thesis aims to comprehend the dimensions of this important relationship.
[16 MB]	Miniature Gardens & Magic Crayons: Games, Spaces, & Worlds (2003) Master`s thesis by Chaim Gingold Discusses the structure, construction, and aesthetics of game worlds, branching possible worlds, point of view in games, and the design of Comic Book Dollhouse.
[3 MB]	Breaking Educational Paradigms (2002) Master`s thesis by David Durovy Design began with the first conscious decision of creation. While design adds utility, aesthetic value, and functionality to an object, mechanical, chemical, and material properties also function in the outcome. When examined as a finished product, the object is more than good looks, pretty colors, and smooth surfaces as a result of design. The object becomes usable and salable because of forces working beyond just the design - a greater cultural context fuels product perception. Advanced industrial design products succeed because of the marriage of the many disciplines involved in their creation.
[5 MB]	Computers, Communication, Collabration and Cognition (2002) Master`s thesis by Aditya Johri Every technological system is situated within a complex environment that determines how that technology is used. This thesis investigates one such system - The Global Classroom Project. The Global Classroom Project integrates online and traditional classes to provide students form Russia and US an opportunity to engage in cross-cultural digital communication.
[18 MB]	Bringing Community to the Holodeck (2001) Master`s thesis by David Mallon Building expressive narrative forms in digital media is a relatively new undertaking. Theories of discourse concerning digital narrative forms are also new, and they are evolving almost as fast as the media they hope to describe. As part of this evolution, this document surfaces some of the theoretical and practical implications for narrative forms in highly multi-user digital environments. Three current theoretical perspectives: Janet Murray`s theories of interactive narrative, Espen Aarseth`s concept of the cybertext, and Brenda Laurel`s research in mediated, interactive theatre, provide foundation for an analysis of the computer game EverQuest. EverQuest is most popular current example of a new genre of digital entertainment known as the Massively Multi-Player Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG).
[15 MB]	Videogames of Opressed (2001) Master`s thesis by Gonzalo Frasca This thesis examines the potential of video games as a medium for fostering critical thinking and discussion about social and personal problems. This analysis focuses on simulation as a representational form, which unlike others such as narrative, creates models that not only display the characteristics of the source system, but also reproduce its behavior by means of a set of rules. Therefore, video games have the potential to represent reality not as a collection of images or texts, but as a dynamic system that can evolve and change.
[10 MB]	Collabrative Educational Strategies (2000) Master`s thesis by Christina Hess The CoWeb is a flexible, web-based teaching tool that allows students and instructors to communicate online and requires very little computer skills. My thesis investigates the degree to which the accessibility and flexibility of the CoWeb contribute to creating unique, course-based user communities in which participants are encouraged to learn through interaction with peers.
[8 MB]	Leveraging User Content in E-Commerce to Gain and Maintain Market Dominance (2000) Master`s thesis by Shelia Mahon As competition for loyal customers increases in electronic commerce, site owners are paying increasing attention to the use of user-generated content within e-commerce Web sites. While research has indicated that incorporating user content into a site can have a positive effect on the site`s overall success, we have little information about how or why this is the case. This thesis considers the interplay between user-generated content and the other factors contributing to the success of an e-commerce web site, including branding and Internet culture.
[8 MB]	The Potential Impact of the Internet Kiosk on Electronic Commerce (2000) Master`s thesis by Junko Sakaguchi-Inoue The U.S. Internet population is approaching half of the overall U.S. population. In only six years, the Web has diffused into our society and created a new digital paradigm. In terms of electronic commerce (EC), online sales to consumers are growing rapidly. "Doing business online" is now a necessity for business. Although online sales were estimated to be over $20 billion in 1999, the population of real online purchasers represents only 8% of the overall U.S. population. Some experts point out that the growth of EC might stall as catalog shopping did unless shopping environments and marketing strategies are improved. Development of new strategies to entice more of the population into EC is a must for the growth of EC.
[6 MB]	Applying New Media Theories to Understanding the Design of New Media Applications (2000) Master`s thesis by Kate Sutton This thesis examines the concept of agency; a mixture of opportunity and choice in interactivity, usability, and values (security/trust/privacy). This analysis focuses on a particular type of site (personal financial portals), the context in which these sites have developed the role of agency in design theories used to drive the development of the genre, and the user`s experiences using these sites. Portal sites, specifically those providing access to financial/personal data, are one genre of web application where the concept of agency is of particular interest.