RESEARCH

UNDERSTANDING PEOPLE and processes

My curiosity leads me to questions about how we exist, interact, and navigate identity in physical and digital spaces. Below details my undergraduate thesis; my experiences in human-subjects research, UX research, and playtesting; and my project investigation of and reflection of AI tools — each of which include external links.

DIGITAL GLOBALIZATION & INTERSECTIONALITY

FILIPINA DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURS AS PLAYERS IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY: AN INTERSECTIONAL FEMINIST ANALYSIS

PRESENTED AT THE 2023 CNS HONORS SYMPOSIUM. READ MY UNDERGRADUATE THESIS HERE.

Thesis Supervisor: Madhavi Mallapragada, PhD || Second Reader: Ken Hou-Lin, PhD || CNS Honors: Rebecca Wilcox, PhD and Sara Corson, PhD

Abstract

The rapid developments from digital globalization present novel challenges and intensify existing inequalities for marginalized groups. Although the Philippines, a major source of digital laborers globally, encourages Filipino citizens to take on digital labor, there is an overall lack of institutional support for these workers. Additionally, there is a universal lack of support for women entrepreneurs, many of whom utilize digital platforms for their work today. Thus, I study female-identifying Filipino (Filipina) digital entrepreneurs, their challenges navigating the industry, and existing efforts that target their challenges. My thesis employs intersectional feminism in my discursive analysis of the Online Micro Sellers Multipurpose Cooperative (OMSMPC) website. With this, I aim to 1) center Filipina digital entrepreneurs as vital contributors to the digital economy and 2) identify strategies that empower Filipina digital entrepreneurs. I find that OMSMPC’s intersectional representation, recognition of digital entrepreneurs’ “glocal” (local and global) position, and accessible, tailored resources are factors that empower Filipina digital entrepreneurs. This thesis contributes to the robust scholarship on gender and labor in the context of globalization that offer nuanced perspectives on issues of power, development, and women empowerment and, relatedly, avoid the simplistic binaries of the world into West and non-West. Community-based organizations like OMSMPC are powerful because they are developed by and for the groups they serve, but institutional support through policy and targeted skills and mindset training for women entrepreneurs is still strongly needed to address existing inequalities and barriers.

THESIS PRESENTATION

HUMAN-SUBJECTS & UX RESEARCH

COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE

DUNSMOOR LAB FOR LEARNING, MEMORY, AND EMOTION

As an Undergraduate Research Assistant, I was exposed to the wide applications of games, such as in neuroscience research, after working on an experiment that used VR to study cognitive processes like creativity, memory, and problem-solving. I name this experience as the root of my interest at the intersection of neuroscience and creative technologies. I developed Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), stimuli sets, and memory tasks for use in experiments that were tested for accuracy with the experimental designs through iteration with the researchers I worked with and validating the data. I also screened participants through the Sona System and performed the experiments according to the SOPs, as well as set up Qualtrics surveys for online experiments. Below are some of the studies I worked on and examples of my contributions.

DOES EXPOSURE TO A NOVEL ENVIRONMENT IMPACT CREATIVITY AND PROBLEM-SOLVING?

I collaborated on the SOPs for this study, which included instructions on the Oculus VR equipment, cognitive tasks (Alternative Uses Test (AUT), Rebus puzzles) on the computer, and how to instruct participants to ensure each run is standardized. I scheduled participants, ran experiments, and scored participant responses. I worked with Dr. Carola Salvi.

  • performing user research to identify pain points

  • synthesizing insights through affinity mapping

  • creating user personas

  • identifying a problem statement

WHAT IS THE EFFECT OF CURIOSITY ON LEARNING AND MEMORY?

I created 2 sets of stimuli (gossip, horror) to place participants in a state of curiosity and 1 set of neutral stimuli. I also created memory tasks in which participants were exposed to facts (history, english, science) and tested on these facts at the end of the study to evaluate learning. I implemented these materials and experimental design in Qualtrics and also released on MTurk. I worked with Drs. Nicole Keller, Carola Salvi, and Emily Leiker.

This paper is currently in the press.

PRODUCT & GAMES

DIGITAL PRESENCE WITH DELL TECHNOLOGIES

I underwent the UX research pipeline through Jessie Contour’s Digital Presence class under the guidance of DELL Technologies, which included:

  • ideating solutions and playtesting to determine the best solution to prototype

  • prototyping a solution

  • evaluating experience impact and business impact

This was another experience that grew my interest in working at the intersection of neuroscience and creative technologies. We investigated the following topics as they relate to digital presence: Identity, Community, and Environment.

COWS VS. ALIENS, AN ALT CTRL CO-OP ARCADE GAME

As the UX Designer for Cows Vs. Aliens, I coordinated our casual and in-house playtesting sessions and performed several UX methods.

Specifically, I:

  • created user personas

  • designed playtesting documents

  • documented playtesting findings with the team

  • evaluated UX in the game’s digital and physical components

  • synthesized findings through affinity mapping

  • presented findings to my teammates

  • suggested action items for next iterations

  • iterated on UX Design alongside my other responsibilities of Game Production, Design, and Programming

Check out more details and updates on my contributions on my Cows Vs. Aliens project page!

AI MODEL INVESTIGATIONS

A COMPARISON OF AI-GENERATED ANIMATION MODELS & A PROPOSED METHOD FOR EVALUATING SIMILARITY BETWEEN ARTIST AND AI WORK

READ ABOUT MY PROCESS AND FINDINGS ON MY PROJECT WEBSITE.

Created in Tyler Coleman’s Spring 2023 Creativity with AI class at UT Austin with guidance from Xuexin Wei, PhD from the Brain, Behavior, and Computation Lab at UT Austin

Introduction

Upon reading literature on, looking at, and creating AI-generated art, I noticed that comparisons on the various models often did not compare the same intended output using the same input. Thus, I wanted to evaluate quality in a more standardized manner and target differences in the models by comparing outputs using the same sources. In this project, I aimed to further compare the quality of diffusion, example-based synthesis, and neural style transfer (NST) models in stylized AI-generated animation through 1) creating three 10-second animations that merge a source exemplar (containing the artistic style) and an original video to evaluate and 2) propose a computational neuroscience method in an attempt to identify to what extent one keyframe from each model’s video maintains the source exemplar. Point 1 evaluates the quality of the methods, whereas Point 2 offers a potential method to measure and question the similarity between the source and the outputs from these models. My project thus enters the discourse on the integration of AI in creative pipelines and on the issue of ownership and AI. This site will cover background on the models and documentation of my processes in addition to the aforementioned points.

Below are the source exemplar and the original video I used in these models. The source exemplar was derived from the ART500K visual arts dataset, which includes over 550,000 labeled visual arts images that follow U.S. Copyright Law’s copyright term based on author death. I chose Mary Cassat’s “The Cup of Tea” from one of the ART500K sources, the Web Gallery of Art, as the source exemplar. I chose a 10 second video of a cat that I recorded as the original video.