Name: Lena Uszkoreit
1. What is your current position?
I am a user experience researcher at Google. Currently, I am working on Google Assistant in Zurich, Switzerland.
2. What role did you play at UXR Lab?
I was a post-doctoral research fellow at the UXR Lab working with Pejman and several members of the labs on different projects.
3. What inspired you to go into games and UX?
Back in the day, I was a huge WoW-nerd and I realized that many of my guildmates ended up being closer friends than people I’ve met IRL. I became fascinated with the kind of social connections people can form in online spaces and especially in games. After my MA at the Berlin University of the Arts I decided to pursue my PhD at USC Annenberg to study social interactions in online games in more detail. I ended up writing a dissertation on video game live streaming and gender.
4. What are some games and apps whose design you love? Why is that?
My favorite game of all times is Portal II and mainly because of the co-op mode. I love how they built a brilliant puzzle game that can be played by 2 players without even using voice comms as they included smart pings and countdowns. The mechanics are so straight forward: shoot mouse 1 and mouse 2 but the possibilities are sheer endless. Good design is simple, works with the constraints at hand and instead of limiting itself through these constraints, grows beyond them!
5. How did you get to join UXR Lab?
Someone @’ed me in a Twitter thread and I responded to Pejman that I have been doing work on Twitch, namely my dissertation on gender and motivations to view different types of streamers. He invited me to come give a talk about it to the UXR Lab team and afterwards we decided to work together on some projects.
6. What is your favorite project that you have worked on?
Probably our SSHR-funded project with Kitfox Games. I loved the idea of bringing my mixed-method communication studies background playing with ideas of social learning and cultivating attitudes and opinions through media to a UXR focused game project. I am still very intrigued by the question of how queer game content can be to appeal to a mass audience as well as whether actually playing as a character that engages in queer romantic interactions can help reduce prejudice. I am also still sad I didn’t get to complete the project in my time at the lab, but I was offered an amazing job opportunity.
7. If you could give any advice to the future UXR Lab members, what would it be?
· Take advantage of Pejman’s knowledge and his expertise
· Build a network while you’re there: Pejman brings in interesting guests and your peers will likely go out into the world and become cool people.
· Attend conferences and conventions to showcase your work and network
· Draw on each others’ knowledge. There are so many capable and talented people in the lab: make use of these cool brains and collaborate, brainstorm, and get feedback on your work
8. What are some of your favorite aspects of UXR Lab?
This might sound a bit corny but after the culture in my PhD program I really appreciated how kind and helpful Pejman was. Seeing how he advised students while doing amazingly well on the research side and smartly combining projects taught me a lot. I really like how the weekly meetings go, how people help each other out with providing feedback on papers or projects. Overall a friendly atmosphere and smart motivated people.
