Hi, I'm Marj! (pronouns: she/her).

I'm a UX Researcher and a Computational Media PhD student in the Alternative Learning Technologies & Games Lab at UC Santa Cruz.

As researchers, empathy should be at the heart of everything we do! I study games in grad school because they emphasize the engagement and enjoyment of the player/user experience. I use mixed-methods processes and design to research my various interests across human-computer interaction (HCI) and games.

My PhD work is in game design research --
I'm interested in exploring how challenge design relates to player experience in games. Specifically, how emotional challenge design relates to reflective player experiences, and how performative challenge design relates to various player experience constructs.