New visiting researcher at INF

Anders Drachen, PhD. will work as a visiting researcher at the department in August-October 2010. Druing his stay, he will be working on analyzing user behavior in interactive entertainment applications, in collaboration with Danish game developer IO Interactive. His visit is motivated by the need for expertise on the industry side of systems/applications development, user behavior analysis and its role in development of applications and information systems (e.g. from experts such as Dr. Torkil Clemmensen and Dr. Ravi Vatrapu)

10/08/2010

The purpose of Dr. Anders Drachens current work is to address the need for applied research on user behavior in interactive entertainment, with a basis in computational analysis. Specifically, the aim is to investigate if there are patterns in user behavior, whether desirable or not from the perspective of design, and classifying them in a way that permits learning from the actions of the users.

This research is enabled thanks to having access to one of the largest, continually growing, repositories of user data in the world, containing user-application interaction data from millions of users across multiple digital games that have gone virtually unused due to a lack of knowledge in the industry about how to employ user data from digital entertainment.

Bio:

Dr. Anders Drachen is a user experience specialist and industry consultant with Game Analytics Technologies. His research is focused on HCI, notably usability, user experience, user-testing and user-driven innovation in interactive entertainment. He is one of the founders of game user research, and an internationally recognized expert in user behavior research, with over four dozen publications in the field and strong industry collaborations. He has been a driving force behind advancing the field rapidly in recent years, and initiated collaborative research that has led to some of the most significant breakthroughs in the area, for example the successful classification of users in commercial-grade games. He is also an active participant in the international research and industry environment in the area, e.g. as a member of the board of the International Game Development Association SIG on Game User Research.

Sidst opdateret: Sekretariat for Ledelse og Kommunikation // 10/08/2010