people

I am a Ph.D. student doing research with Dr. Andruid Kerne at the Interface Ecology Lab . My research intrests include serious gaming, ambient information displays, alternative computer interfaces, psychophysiological sensing, and signal processing.

My primary project is Teaching Team Coordination with Location-aware Games (TTeCLoG) . A major component of this project is a location aware game for studying and enhancing team coordination capabilities for emergency responders. An ongoing ethnographic study with the nearby Brayton Fire Training Facility features prominently in TTeCLoG and in the development of TTeCLoG.

In addition to TTeCLoG, I have also worked on on signal processing and media transformation projects, including Censor Chair , an art installation that uses psychophysilogical sensing and video tracking to censor the output from a media library, and PhysiRogue , an extension of the TTeCLoG 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., 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.

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, in press.

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.

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.

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, In press.

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.