1. Student's Name: Erin J.K. Truesdell
2. Title of thesis: Designing Controllers for Collaborative Play
3. Committee: Dr. Brian Magerko, Advisor; Dr. Michael Nitsche; Dr. Anne Sullivan; Dr. Katherine Isbister; Dr. Noura Howell
4. Location/date: April 7, 2023, 1:00 PM Eastern. TSRB 132 and virtual (https://gatech.zoom.us/j/98401554824)
5. Abstract: Physical inputs are an integral part of the play-experience in digital games. Recent advances in technology and controller creation have led to a proliferation of a great variety of game controllers outside the console gamepad and mouse-and-keyboard paradigm. These alternative controllers offer a broad space of design opportunities and can be configured to support a wide variety of interaction types and amplify digital game mechanics. Alternative controllers are particularly well-suited to collaborative play contexts because they may be designed to take multiple or complementary inputs and thus support multiple simultaneous users. However, there are few resources specific to collaborative alternative controllers available to designers.

My work applies cognitive approaches to human-computer interaction to play to generate a holistic understanding of the relationship between the physical affordances of controllers and the sense-making experiences of players. This allows for the generation of actionable design guidelines that take into account both physical design choices and players' social experiences and the establishment of a novel means of quantifying collaborative embodied gameplay. This dissertation includes four primary contributions: 1) the development of three themes and a taxonomy for collaborative alternative controllers; 2) the documented development of three boundary objects for the purpose of investigating players' sense-making processes with each; 3) the first use of creative sense-making analysis to describe and quantify goal-oriented embodied collaborative play; and 4) a series of design principles developed from an annotated portfolio of the boundary artifacts developed for this thesis and annotation of creative sense-making curves for each. In addition to contributing specifically to the field of alternative game controllers and design for collaborative play, this work contributes to research in games and play studies, tangible and embodied interaction design, and human-centered computing.