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Sometimes the most intriguing revelations come
from people with unexpected backgrounds. Brenda Laurel is a
researcher, a writer and a designer. She holds an M.F.A. and Ph.D. in
theatre from Ohio State University. She has worked as a software
designer, producer and researcher for companies like Atari and Activision.
She is a founding member of the research staff at Interval Research
Corporation where she directed the "Placeholder" Virtual Reality project.
Placeholder is a new concept for computer applications where multiple users
can narrate their own virtual environments. Placeholder led Laurel to
start a company called "Purple Moon", which continues to develop this
project. Laurel is a proponent for enabling the user to complete their
tasks without worrying about the user-interface. In her words, the
user-interface should be transparent to the user. She also makes
insightful and provocative connections between theatre and human-computer
interaction, noting that significant overlap with the fundamental objectives
for both areas exist. Laurel describes how theatre represents actions
using multiple agents and offers a basis for human-computer interaction that
is familiar and evocative to people. Laurel is author of Computers
as Theatre and the editor for The Art of Human-Computer Interface
Design. |
