Senior UX Engineer, Google, Spring 2021 - Present
Acting as a hybrid engineer/design lead at Google, specifically in the field of new products enabled by state-of-the-art LLMs/FMs. Contributions include:
Founder, Ilinx Interactive LLC, Fall 2019 - Spring 2021
Providing teaching, game development, consulting, and creative coding expertise--from lectures, to R&D and prototyping, to polished installations at events--for a variety of clients, including the School for Poetic Computation, Wasserman Media Group, and Google Research.
Human in Research (Postdoctoral Fellow), New York University, Fall 2019
Part of the Fall 2019 cohort of Humans In Research, a position intended to energize the spirit of research at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program by pulling in and supporting artists doing work at the bleeding edge of their fields. As part of the residency, taught a 4-credit class called Joy + Games.
Creative Technologist, Adecco (Google Creative Lab), 2017 - 2019
Worked a 2 year full-time contract for Google (via Adecco) to prototype and develop delightful, engaging, and future-thinking experiments with the Google Creative Lab. Fulfilling roles from prototyper to production coder to developer relations and more. In addition to proprietary/internal code and prototypes, projects included:
Creative Researcher, The Office For Creative Research, 2016 - 2017
Developed data visualizations and tools to promote data literacy until the closure of the studio in 2017. Projects included the Elephant Atlas, a data visualization and exploration platform in collaboration with the Great Elephant Census; the v2 of Floodwatch, a platform to help people uncover, interpret, and understand data about how advertisers are tracking them; and the St Louis Maproom, a community space for creating and exploring original, interpretive maps of the city that reflect the personal stories and lived experiences of its residents.
Creative Technologist, The New York Times R&D Lab, 2013 - 2016
Developed prototypes with emerging technologies to explore the social and cultural impact of these technologies on the future of news and media. Projects included Madison, a crowdsourcing project to uncover new metadata about the company's extensive archives of historical advertisements; Particles, a research project and set of prototypes about collecting metadata and its impact on news publishing and platform flexibility; and Membrane, an experiment in permeable publishing.
Co-founder & Professor, Code Liberation, 2013 - 2015
Co-founded an organization that teaches women of all experience levels how to program games for free. Designed and developed open-source lesson plans, slides, and sample code for learning openFrameworks, C++, Processing, Unity, and GameMaker. Taught classes and workshops on basic game programming as well as more advanced subjects like Open Sound Control and Kinect.
MFA, Design + Technology
Parsons, The New School 2011 - 2013
Graduated with honors
Dean's Merit Scholarship
BA, Independent Study in Sustainable Development
Columbia University, 2006 - 2010
Graduated Magna Cum Laude
Technical
Frontend and backend web development, including Javascript, NodeJS, React, Firebase, etc.
Creative coding tools, including Unity/C#, Processing, Python
AI engineering/prompt engineering for AI models
Visual & UX Design
Figma, Adobe Suite, sketching & wireframing, user testing/playtesting
Werewolf Arena: A Case Study in LLM Evaluation via Social Deduction
Werewolf Arena is a novel framework for evaluating large language models (LLMs) through the lens of the classic social deduction game, Werewolf. In Werewolf Arena, LLMs compete against each other, navigating the game's complex dynamics of deception, deduction, and persuasion. The framework introduces a dynamic turn-taking system based on bidding, mirroring real-world discussions where individuals strategically choose when to speak. We demonstrate the framework's utility through an arena-style tournament featuring different models. Our results reveal distinct strengths and weaknesses in the models' strategic reasoning and communication. These findings highlight Werewolf Arena's potential as a challenging and scalable LLM benchmark.
WordPlay: An Agent Framework for Language Learning Games
WordPlay is a novel framework for building language learning games. WordPlay combines playful mini-puzzle games with large language models and text-to-image models to address the challenge of balancing engagement and effective language practice. Part of the NeurIPS GAIED workshop in 2023.
An ongoing, multipart game design deep dive, expanding on the course I taught as part of my NYU ITP residency.
The Field Guide to Open Source in the Newsroom
Collectively written by 11 participants from different news/journalism/data organizations (more).
Wrote chapter on design and creation of the Elephant Atlas.
Suit The System To The Player: A Methodology for Physical Creativity
Published in the DiGRA 2013 Proceedings.
Untangling Twine: A Platform Study
Published in the DiGRA 2013 Proceedings (citations).
ofBook chapter, Experimental Game Development
Co-written with Phoenix Perry (chapter contents).