My name is Nell O'Rourke and I am a third year Ph.D. student at the University of Washington advised by Zoran Popović. I work in the Center for Game Science developing technologies to foster learning and engagement in educational video games. I am particularly interested in understanding how game interfaces can adapt to a player's strengths and weaknesses and empower learning and exploration. I am also a member of DUB, a multidisciplinary group at UW that conducts research in Human Computer Interaction and Design.

Email:

eorourke@cs.washington.edu

Mail:

Computer Science and Engineering
Box 352350
Seattle, WA 98195-2350

Office:

Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering, room 386

CV:

PDF version available here

Targeted Hinting Systems
One important challenge in the design of educational games is to create opportunities to teach players new concepts. I aim to address this challenge by developing a hinting system that provides tips and lessons that are directly targeted to the misunderstandings of an individual player. I am exploring a variety of hint types to develop a system that will engage and empower players to learn and tackle new problems.

Game Tutorials
One of the key challenges of video game design is teaching new users how to play. While many games use tutorials to introduce new players to game mechanics, very little is known about how tutorials affect engagement and retention. We are examining a number of different tutorial designs across multiple games to try to discover more about the relationship between tutorials and player behavior.

2012

Andersen, E., O'Rourke, E., Liu, Y., Snider, R., Lowdermilk, J., Truong, D., Cooper, S., Popović, Z. The Impact of Tutorials on Games of Varying Complexity. Proc. SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012). PDF

2010

Chaudhri, R., O'Rourke, E., McGuire, S., Borriello, G., Anderson, R. FoneAstra: Enabling Remote Monitoring of Vaccine Cold-Chains Using Commodity Mobile Phones. ACM Symposium on Computing for Development (DEV 2010). PDF

2010

Anderson, R., Blantz, E., Lubinski, D., O'Rourke, E., Summer, M., and Yousoufian, K. SmartConnect: Last mile data connectivity for rural health clinics. 4th ACM Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions (NSDR 2010). PDF

2007

Interrante V., O'Rourke E., Gray L., Anderson L. and Ries B. A Quantitative Assessment of the Impact on Spatial Understanding of Exploring a Complex Immersive Virtual Environment using Augmented Real Walking versus Flying. Proc. of the 13th Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments. PDF

2007

Interrante, V., Anderson, L., Ries, B., O'Rourke, E., and Gray, L. Experimental investigations into the feasibility of using augmented walking to facilitate the intuitive exploration of large scale immersive virtual environments [Abstract]. Proc. of the 4th Symposium on Applied Perception in Graphics and Visualization (APGV 2007). vol. 253. ACM, New York, NY, p.144. PDF

2007

Interrante, V., Ries, B., O'Rourke, E., Gray, L., Lindquist, J., and Anderson, L. Evaluating alternative metaphors for augmented locomotion through large-scale immersive virtual environments [Abstract]. Journal of Vision, 7(9):145, 145a.