Katherine Isbister
Katherine Isbister | |
|---|---|
 Isbister in 2024
 | |
| Born | Katherine Currie Isbister |
| Nationality | American |
| Citizenship | American |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago (BA) Stanford University (MA, PhD) |
| Known for | Games and Emotion Social VR Game Usability |
| Awards | ACM Distinguished Scientist (2016) Founding Fellow, HEVGA (2016) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Human computer interaction Game design |
| Institutions | University of California Santa Cruz New York University IT University of Copenhagen Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Stanford University |
| Thesis | Reading personality in onscreen interactive characters (1998) |
| Doctoral advisor | Clifford Nass |
| Other academic advisors | Byron Reeves, Barbara Hayes-Roth, Larry Friedlander |
| Website | katherineinterface |
Katherine Isbister is an American researcher and designer specializing in human computer interaction (HCI) and game design. She is a professor of computational media at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Previously, she was an associate professor at New York University, with a joint appointment in computer science and in the Game Center at the Tisch School of the Arts.[1] At NYU, she was the founding research director of the Game Innovation Lab.[1]
Education and early life
Isbister was born in Illinois, U.S., and grew up in North Carolina. She attended the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics for high school before earning a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at the University of Chicago. She later obtained a Master of Science (1995) and Ph.D. (1998) from Stanford University in the Communication Department, where she worked with Clifford Nass on human-computer interaction.
Career
After completing her Ph.D., Isbister worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the NTT Open Science Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan, contributing to the Digital Cities project with Toru Ishida.[2] She later joined NetSage, a startup co-founded by her Ph.D. advisor.
In 2004, Isbister became an Associate Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute before moving to the IT University of Copenhagen in 2008. She later returned to the U.S. to teach at NYU where she held a faculty position in both computer science and the Game Center until 2015. In 2015, she joined UC Santa Cruz as a professor in the Computational Media department.[3] There, she directs the Social Emotional Technology Lab.[4]
Research and publications
Isbister's work focuses on designing emotionally and socially engaging digital experiences. She has contributed to research on character/avatar/agent design, user experience, and playful technology. Her books include:
- Better Game Characters by Design: A Psychological Approach (2006),[5] nominated for a Game Developer Magazine Frontline Award.[6]
- How Games Move Us (MIT Press, 2016).[7]
- Playful Wearables (MIT Press, 2024).[8]
- Game Usability: Advice from the Experts for Advancing the Player Experience (first edition 2008,[9] second edition 2022).[10]
Her recent research has explored playful approaches to emotion regulation[11] and social virtual reality (VR). Her work on VR meeting spaces[12] and scientific sensemaking tools[13] has received funding from the Sloan Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Her research on emotion regulation[14] led to the development of Purrble, a self-soothing toy named one of Time Magazine's Best Inventions of 2021.[15] Her research has been featured in Scientific American,[16] The Guardian,[17] and Science Friday.[18]
Leadership and public engagement
Isbister has held leadership roles in major HCI and game research conferences. She served as the technical program chair for CHI 2021[19] and has been a member of the steering committees for CHI and CHI-Play.[20] She has also been an advisor for the Game Developers Conference (GDC) Education Summit[21] and an editorial board member for ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction.[22]
Awards and honors
- MIT Technology Review's Innovators under 35 (1999).[23]
- Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers (2011).
- Lenore Annenberg and Wallis Annenberg Fellowship in Communication at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (2014–2015).[24]
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Distinguished Scientist.[25]
- Founding Fellow of the Higher Education Video Game Alliance (HEVGA).[26]
References
- ^ a b About, Katherineinterface.com
- ^ Akahani, Jun-ichi; Isbister, Katherine; Ishida, Toru (2000-04-01). "Digital city project: NTT open laboratory". CHI '00 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 227–228. doi:10.1145/633292.633424. ISBN 978-1-58113-248-9.
- ^ "Campus Directory - UC Santa Cruz". campusdirectory.ucsc.edu. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ "People | SET Lab - UC Santa Cruz". setlab.soe.ucsc.edu. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ Isbister, Katherine (2006). Better game characters by design : a psychological approach. Amsterdam Boston: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN 978-1-55860-921-1.
- ^ "Game Developer Reveals 9th Front Line Award Finalists". Gamasutra. 2007-01-17. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
- ^ "How Games Move Us". MIT Press. Retrieved 2025-07-07.
- ^ "Playful Wearables". MIT Press. Retrieved 2025-07-07.
- ^ Isbister, Katherine; Schaffer, Noah (12 August 2008). Game Usability. CRC Press. ISBN 978-0-12-374447-0. Retrieved 2025-07-29.
- ^ "Game Usability: Advice from the Experts for Advancing UX Strategy and Practice in Videogames". Routledge & CRC Press. Retrieved 2025-07-07.
- ^ Isbister, Katherine; Cottrell, Peter; Cecchet, Alessia; Dagan, Ella; Theofanopoulou, Nikki; Bertran, Ferran Altarriba; Horowitz, Aaron J.; Mead, Nick; Schwartz, Joel B.; Slovak, Petr (2022-08-31). "Design (Not) Lost in Translation: A Case Study of an Intimate-Space Socially Assistive "Robot" for Emotion Regulation". ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 29 (4): 1–36. doi:10.1145/3491083. ISSN 1073-0516.
- ^ McVeigh-Schultz, Joshua; Márquez Segura, Elena; Isbister, Katherine (2024-10-21). "Designing our Weird Social XR Future: Tactics to support hybrid ways of embodied knowing". Proceedings of the Halfway to the Future Symposium. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–11. doi:10.1145/3686169.3686199. ISBN 979-8-4007-1042-1.
- ^ Ghosh, Samir; Wang, Yuhui; Zhou, William; Lin, Kelly; Mcveigh-Schultz, Joshua; Isbister, Katherine (2024-05-11). "Designing Shared VR Tools for Spatial Scientific Sensemaking About Wildfire Evacuation". Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–5. doi:10.1145/3613905.3650819. ISBN 979-8-4007-0331-7.
- ^ Isbister, Katherine; Cottrell, Peter; Cecchet, Alessia; Dagan, Ella; Theofanopoulou, Nikki; Bertran, Ferran Altarriba; Horowitz, Aaron J.; Mead, Nick; Schwartz, Joel B.; Slovak, Petr (2022-03-31). "Design (Not) Lost in Translation: A Case Study of an Intimate-Space Socially Assistive "Robot" for Emotion Regulation". ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 29 (4): 32:1–32:36. doi:10.1145/3491083. ISSN 1073-0516.
- ^ "Sproutel Purrble: The 100 Best Inventions of 2021". Time. 2021-11-10. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ US, Katherine Isbister, The Conversation. "Fidget Toys Aren't Just Hype". Scientific American. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Ayoub, Sarah (2021-05-28). "Pop it, a hit: how a rainbow, reusable bubblewrap fidget toy became a playground must-have". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ "Katherine Isbister". Science Friday. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ CHI2021. "CHI2021 | May 8-13, Yokohama, Japan". CHI2021 | May 8-13, Yokohama, Japan. Retrieved 2025-07-29.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ "CHI PLAY Steering Committee". Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ "Summit Advisors | Game Developers Conference". gdconf.com. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ "ACM TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTER-HUMAN INTERACTION Editorial Board | ACM Digital Library". ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. doi:10.1145/TOCHI (inactive 8 August 2025). Retrieved 2025-07-25.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of August 2025 (link) - ^ Review, MIT Technology. "Innovator Under 35: Katherine Isbister, 30". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on 2022-08-16. Retrieved 2016-10-09.
- ^ "Exploring, Enhancing, and Understanding the Social and Emotional Palette of Games and Play". Jack Baskin School of Engineering. 2016-09-26. Retrieved 2016-10-19.
- ^ Stephens, Tim (2016-12-02). "Games researcher Katherine Isbister honored by Association for Computing Machinery". News. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
- ^ "HEVGA Fellows Program – HEVGA". hevga.org. Retrieved 2025-07-25.