UWSpace

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Recent Submissions

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    Theory, Experience, and Instinct: How AAA Game Studio UX Leaders Navigate Pre-Production
    (Association for Computing Machinery, 2026-04-13) Randelshofer, Ivana; Tu, Joseph; Cao, Yifan; Mogavi, Reza Hadi; Mäkelä, Ville; Nacke, Lennart E.
    Academic frameworks have limited practical application in game pre-production because they do not map well to industry contexts and constraints. Through semi-structured interviews with 15 senior UX leaders from AAA game studios, we examined how practitioners make design decisions during early development. Our findings show a tripartite approach: (1) academically-grounded translation, where practitioners selectively adapt formal theories; (2) experience-based codification, where teams systematize tacit knowledge into reusable artifacts; and (3) intuitive gut feeling, where expertise guides decisions without formal frameworks. We introduce organizational structures (i.e., strike teams and competency teams) that shape how academic knowledge is translated in practice. Our work challenges the traditional view that practitioners should directly apply academic theory. Academia’s unique opportunity here is to provide the conceptual building blocks that enable solutions practitioners need. A change that begins with knowing how practitioners already translate academic knowledge into actionable practice.
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    User traits mosaic: Understanding the multifaceted landscape of social VR users
    (Elsevier, 2026-03-04) Kukshinov, Eugene; Harley, Daniel; Tu, Joseph; Wang, Derrick M.; Hadan, Hilda; Nacke, Lennart E.
    Social Virtual Reality (SVR) consists of multi-user digital platforms that afford various co-located activities and collaborations in simulated environments. Despite considerable knowledge about separate ways SVR users engage these platforms, we currently lack a comprehensive categorization of user practices in SVR that also demonstrates connections between these practices. To address this gap, we build upon existing research and report a survey-based, open-ended investigation, analyzing structured qualitative data that reveals how people use SVR, confirming prior research, but also gaining new evidence. We identified 23 distinct SVR user traits based on their activities, motivations, and attitudes towards avatars and social orientations. Our categorization not only clarifies SVR user behaviors and describes the overall current social landscape of SVR, but it also offers valuable insights for design frameworks to enhance the experiential and collaborative potential of SVR. We conclude by providing suggestions for how our categorizations might be used to describe the social connections and relationships between users, address trait-specific challenges, and better cater to users’ needs, whether they seek social connection, solo exploration, or specific practices within SVR.
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    Z-score differences based on cross-sectional growth charts do not reflect the growth rate of very low birth weight infants
    (Public Library of Science, 2019-05-07) Rochow, Niels; Landau-Crangle, Erin; So, Hon Yiu; Pelc, Anna; Fusch, Gerhard; Dabritz, Jan; Gopel, Wolfgang; Fusch, Christoph
    Objective To test whether the assessment of growth in very low birth weight infants during the hospital stay using z-score differences (Zdiff) is confounded by gestational age (GA), birth weight percentile (BW%ile), and length of the observation period (LOP). We hypothesize that Zdiff calculated from growth charts based on birth weight data introduces a systematic statistical error leading to falsely classified growth as restricted in infants growing similarly to the 50th percentile. Methods The observational study included 6,926 VLBW infants from the German Neonatal Network (2009 to 2015). Inclusion criterion was discharge between 37 and 41 weeks postmenstrual age. For each infant, Zdiff, weight gain velocity, and reference growth rate (50th percentile Fenton) from birth to discharge were calculated. To account for gestational age dependent growth rates, assessment of growth was standardized calculating the weight gain ratio (WGR) = weight gain velocity/reference growth rate. The primary outcome is the variation of the Zdiff-to-WGR relationship. Results Zdiff and WGR showed a weak agreement with a Zdiff of -0.74 (-1.03, -0.37) at the reference growth rate of the 50th percentile (WGR = 1). A significant proportion (n = 1,585; 23%) of infants with negative Zdiff had weight gain velocity above the 50th percentile's growth rate. Zdiff to WGR relation was significantly affected by the interaction of GA x BW%ile x LOP. Conclusion This study supports the hypothesis that Zdiff, which are calculated using birth weights, are confounded by skewed reference data and can lead to misinterpretation of growth rates. New concepts like individualized growth trajectories may have the potential to overcome this limitation.
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    CancerInSilico: An R/Bioconductor package for combining mathematical and statistical modeling to simulate time course bulk and single cell gene expression data in cancer
    (Public Library of Science, 2019-04-19) Sherman, Thomas D.; Kagohara, Luciane T.; Cao, Raymon; Cheng, Raymond; Satriano, Matthew; Considine, Michael; Krigsfeld, Gabriel; Ranaweera, Ruchira; Tang, Yong; Jablonski, Sandra A.; Stein-O'Brien, Genevieve; Gaykalova, Daria A.; Weiner, Louis M.; Chung, Christine H.; Fertig, Elana J.
    Bioinformatics techniques to analyze time course bulk and single cell omics data are advancing. The absence of a known ground truth of the dynamics of molecular changes challenges benchmarking their performance on real data. Realistic simulated time-course datasets are essential to assess the performance of time course bioinformatics algorithms. We develop an R/Bioconductor package, CancerInSilico, to simulate bulk and single cell transcriptional data from a known ground truth obtained from mathematical models of cellular systems. This package contains a general R infrastructure for running cell-based models and simulating gene expression data based on the model states. We show how to use this package to simulate a gene expression data set and consequently benchmark analysis methods on this data set with a known ground truth. The package is freely available via Bioconductor: http://bioconductor.org/packages/CancerInSilico/
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    Using EMRALD to assess baseline body mass index among children living within and outside communities participating in the Ontario, Canada Healthy Kids Community Challenge
    (Public Library of Science, 2019-04-11) Orr, Sarah K.; Tu, Karen; Carsley, Sarah; Chung, Hannah; Holder, Laura; Jabbari, Shirin; Harrington, Daniel W.; Manson, Heather
    Objectives The Healthy Kids Community Challenge is a large-scale, centrally-coordinated, community-based intervention in Ontario, Canada that promotes healthy behaviours towards improving healthy weights among children. With the goal of exploring tools available to evaluators, we leveraged electronic medical records from primary care physicians to assess child weights prior to launch of the Healthy Kids Community Challenge. This study compares the baseline (i.e. pre-intervention) prevalence of overweight and obesity in children 1-12 years of age living within and outside Healthy Kids Community Challenge communities. Design Cross-sectional analysis of a primary care patient cohort. Setting Electronic Medical Record Administrative data Linked Database (EMRALD) in Ontario, Canada. Participants A cohort of 19 920 Ontario children who are rostered to an EMRALD physician. Children were 1-12 years of age as a primary care visit with recorded measured height and weight, between January 1, 2014 and December 31, 2015. Outcome measure Overweight and obesity as determined by age- and sex-standardized body mass index using World Health Organization's Growth Standards. Results In Healthy Kids Community Challenge communities, 25.6% (95% Cl 24.6-26.6%) of children had zBMI above normal (i.e. >1) compared to 26.7% (95% Cl 25.9-27.5%) for children living outside of Healthy Kids Community Challenge communities. Conclusions Despite some differences in sociodemographic characteristics, zBMI of children aged 1-12 years were similar inside and outside of Healthy Kids Community Challenge community boundaries prior to program launch.