people

I research games for educating crisis responders and information technology in disaster at the TEEX / TEES Crisis Response Innovative Technologies Lab, located at the Disaster City Emergency Ops Training Center. My ongoing work is to deploy the zero-fidelity simulation Team Coordination Game in disaster response courses, developing new game mechanics. This work designs the mixed reality version, described below. Further, I investigate the role of information technology and mobile devices in emergency response contexts.

I am continuing research with Andruid Kerne at the Interface Ecology Lab. I previously interned at the Yahoo! Research Internet Experiences Group with Elizabeth Churchill and Ayman Shamma investigating the use of mobile devices in shopping. My research interests include serious gaming, game mechanic design, mixed reality, team coordination, ethnographic approaches, and signal processing.

My dissertation and ongoing research project is Teaching Team Coordination with Location-aware Games (T²eCLoG). T²eCLoG iteratively develops zero-fidelity, non-mimetic simulation mixed reality game designs for studying and enhancing the team coordination capabilities of emergency responders. A zero-fidelity, non-mimetic simulation captures abstract, human-centered aspects of work practice, rather than directly mimicking the target domain. An ongoing ethnographic study with the Brayton Fire Training Facility informs the designs. Game user studies with fire emergency response students evaluate its effectiveness for teaching team coordination. A component of the T²eCLoG research develops an ergonomic wearable computing platform with head-mounted display, orientation and location sensors, and radio communication.

In addition to T²eCLoG, I previously collaborated on signal processing and media transformation projects. Censor Chair is an art installation that uses psychophysiological sensing and video tracking to censor the output from a media library in response to the presence of those around the participant and the participant's stress level. PhysiRogue is an extension of the T²eCLoG stationary game that uses psychophysiological sensing to enhance the game experience using stress as a component of play.

publications, presentations, and exhibitions:

Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A., Hamilton, W. A. The Team Coordination Game: A zero-fidelity simulation abstracted from fire emergency response work practice, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (ToCHI) 18, 4, 2011, 37 pages, [DOI:10.1145/2063231.2063237].

Toups, Z. O., Hamilton, W. A., Kerne, A. Zero-fidelity simulation: Engaging team coordination without physical, functional, or psychological re-creation , accepted to Proc. MODSIM World 2011.

Toups, Z.O., Kerne, A., Hamilton, W. A., Shahzad, N. Zero-Fidelity Simulation of Fire Emergency Response: Improving Team Coordination Learning, Proc ACM SIGCHI 2011, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 7–12 May 2011, 1959–1968, [DOI:10.1145/1978942.1979226].

Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A., Hamilton, W. Game Design Principles for Engaging Cooperative Play: Core Mechanics and Interfaces for Non-Mimetic Simulation of Fire Emergency Response, Proc ACM SIGGRAPH Games 2009, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, August 3–7, 2009, 71–78, [DOI:10.1145/1581073.1581085].

Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A., Hamilton, W., Blevins, A. Emergent Team Coordination: From Fire Emergency Response Practice to a Non-Mimetic Simulation Game, Proc ACM Group 2009, Sanibel Island, Florida, USA, May 10–13, 2009, 341–350, [DOI:10.1145/1531674.1531725].

Hamilton, W., Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A. Synchronized Communication and Coordinated Views: Qualitative Data Discovery for Team Game User Studies, Ext Abs ACM Computer Human Interaction 2009, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, April 4–9, 2009, 4573–4578, [DOI:10.1145/1520340.1520702].

Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A., Hamilton, W. Motivating Play through Score, ACM Computer Human Interaction 2009 Workshop on Engagement by Design, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, April 4–9, 2009.

Kerne, A., Toups, Z.O., Dworaczyk, B., Khandelwal, M. A Concise XML Binding Framework Facilitates Practical Object-Oriented Document Engineering, Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Document Engineering, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 16–19 September 2008, 62–65.

Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A., Implicit Coordination in Firefighting Practice: Design Implications for Teaching Fire Emergency Responders, Proc ACM Computer Human Interaction 2007, San Jose, April 2007, 277–286.

Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A., Location-Aware Augmented Reality Gaming for Emergency Response Education: Concepts and Development, Proc ACM Computer Human Interaction 2007 Workshop on Mobile Spatial Interaction, San Jose, April 2007.

Toups, Z. O., Graeber, R., Kerne, A., Tassinary, L., Berry, S., Overby, K., Johnson, M., A Design for Using Physiological Signals to Affect Team Game Play, Proc Augmented Cognition International, Oct 2006: San Francisco.

Toups, Z., Overby, K., Kerne, A., Graeber, R., Cooper, T., Alley, E., Censor Chair, ACM SIGCHI Intl Conf on Advances in Computer Entertainment, June 2006, Hollywood. Alley, E. Cooper, T., Graeber, R., Kerne, A., Overby, K., Toups, Z., Censor Chair: Exploring Censorship and Social Presence through Psychophysiological Sensing, Proc ACM Multimedia 2005, 922–929.

Toups, Z. O., Kerne, A., Caruso, D., Devoy, E., Graeber, R., Overby, K., Rogue Signals: A location aware game for studying the social effects of information bottlenecks, Proc Ubicomp Extended Abstracts, Sept 2005: Tokyo.