Current Projects

In recent years, I have been pursuing a collaborative, participatory research-through-design project that invites diverse participants to lend their perspectives and experiences to a project to explore what inclusive character creation can look like, by default. Games and digital media have become increasingly inclusive, but too often take an additive approach (e.g., just add more skin tones or hairstyles to a familiar system that relies a white male default). 

Although discussions about diversity in media have increased in the last 10 years, this sort of work is only worthwhile if people with a diversity of identities, backgrounds, and interests are contributing. In this project, I have taken extra care to recruit participants who identify as part of groups who are historically under-represented, and invited them to participate beyond simply contributing data. Participants have the opportunity to collaborate up and including authorship and control over the project's website (coming soon). 

This project is continuing to evolve, but the most recent checkpoint is this paper. You can also find a companion site for this paper at https://ptp-project.com/

I recently wrapped an initial stage of a similar a project in structure and intent to the above project, only around accessible physical gaming interfaces (i.e., controllers). There have been only two accessibility controllers made by major game platform manufacturers over the past 40 years. In this project, I am working with participants with a diverse range of motor, sensory, and neurological capacities to explore what a controller that is more accessible by default might look like.

This project will also continue to evolve, but it is too early to yet say how.