Hi! I’m Joshua A. Fisher, Ph.D.
Academic, Designer, and Developer studying XR and AI from a Digital Humanist Perspective
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About Me
Joshua A. Fisher, Ph.D. is an expert in interactive non-fiction storytelling through XR. He is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Design and Development at Ball State University. There he teaches classes on Immersive Media design and development. Fisher has published at a variety of IEEE, Springer, and ACM conferences including ACM Multimedia, International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, Virtual Reality 4 Good, CHI-Play, and IEEE VR. His research explores not just the design of XR platforms for interactive non-fiction but the ethics of producing immersive media. Fisher recently released an edited collection entitled Augmented and Mixed Reality for Communities by CRC Press. His latest research on A Proposed Curriculum for an Introductory Course on Interactive Digital Narratives in Virtual Reality won best paper at the International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling.
Education
My Technical Skills
Programming
C#, HTML, CSS, A-frame, JavaScript, React.js, PHP, MySQL, CSS, jQuery, three.js, LUA, Firebase, MapBox, and WordPress
Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual Reality
Unity, SparkAR, Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, Microsoft HoloLens, SteamVR, arKit, arCore, Vuforia, Snap's Lens Studio and Leap Motion
Mobile Design and Development
Xcode, Android Studio, Corona SDK, and PhoneGap
Digital Media Production
Adobe Premiere, After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Audition
My Professional Skills
Teaching and Research
Developed curricula for immersive media, serious games, usability, communication and cultural studies, interactive narrative, interaction design, user experience design, and principles of visual design
User Experience and Interaction Design
Sketch, Figma, Participatory Design, Design as Research, Competitve Analysis, Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods
Interactive Storytelling, Narrative and Documentary
Developed multiple mobile applications, XR experiences, and websites for storytelling
Entrepreneurship and Project Management
Founded and developed two startups that offered digital media services
Academic Career History
Industry Career History
Publications
2024
- Fisher, Joshua A., Maria Cecilia Reyes, and Jonathan Barbara. "Interactive Digital Narrative Syllabi from Around the World: A Preliminary Analysis." International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024.
- Gonzales, Ian, and Joshua A. Fisher. "Overlapping Expectations: Studying the Genre Relationship of Open-World and Ecocritical Genres." International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2024.
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
- Fisher, Joshua A., Melissa Foulger, and Jennifer Edwards. "Practical Insights for XR Devised Performances." International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Springer, Cham, 2019.
- Fisher, Joshua A. Interactive Non-fiction with Reality Media: Rhetorical Affordances. Diss. Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019.
2018
- Fisher, Joshua A. "Bauhaus scenography for virtual reality." Virtual Creativity 8.1 (2018): 39-57.
- Fisher, Joshua A., Sarah Schoemann "Toward an Ethics of Interactive Storytelling at Dark Tourism Sites in Virtual Reality" 2018 International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Springer, Cham, 2018.
- Fisher, Joshua A., Jay Bolter "Ethical Considerations for AR Experiences at Dark Tourism Sites" 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Berlin, 2018.
- Fisher, Joshua A.,Linying Shangguan, Joshua Crisp "Developing a Platform for Community-curated Mixed Reality Play Spaces" In Extended Abstracts Publication of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 2018
2017
- Fisher, Joshua A., Amit P. Garg, Wesley Wang, Karan Pratap Singh. "Bauhaus Scenography for Virtual Environments." 23rd International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM). IEEE, 2017.
- Fisher, Joshua A. "Empathic Actualities: Toward a Taxonomy of Empathy in Virtual Reality." International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Springer, Cham, 2017.
- Fisher, Joshua A., Amit P. Garg, Karan Pratap Singh, Wesley Wang. 2017. "ARES: An Application of Impossible Spaces for Natural Locomotion in VR" 2017 CHI Student Game Competition. Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '17). ACM, New York, NY, USA
- Fisher, Joshua A., Amit P. Garg, Karan Pratap Singh, Wesley Wang. “Designing Intentional Impossible Spaces to Increase Presence in Virtual Reality Narratives” 2017 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR), Las Vegas, NV, 2017
- Fisher, Joshua Adler, and Jeremy Applebaum. "Media device that uses geolocated hotspots to deliver content data on a hyper-local basis." U.S. Patent Application No. 14/812,678.
2016
- Fisher, Joshua A. "Utilizing the Mixed Reality Cube Taxonomy for Interactive Documentary Research." Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Multimedia Alternate Realities. ACM, 2016.
- Fisher, Joshua A. "Strong Concepts for Designing Non-verbal Interactions in Mixed Reality Narratives." International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Springer, Cham, 2016.
Portfolio
Research Statement
I have dedicated my research focus to analyzing and producing non-fiction experiences and interfaces that use immersive media—Augmented, Mixed, and Virtual Reality (AR, MR, and VR—XR collectively). Specifically, I explore how interaction design for immersive media non-fiction can be a rhetorical practice to create knowledge, help communities, and empower others. My research utilizes concepts from Science, Technology, and Society (STS) to study this topic from various perspectives— cultural, historical, political, and ethical—as part of a research through design methodology that centers new forms of participation and cultural expression. Guided by humanistic principles, I work with communities on these XR interfaces and non-fiction experiences, who, in turn, then evaluate their effectiveness. As part of this evaluation, I derive insights through quantitative and qualitative methods to critically explore how theory as media practice plays out in real-world contexts.
Teaching Philosophy
I have had the privilege of teaching for around a decade at a diverse range of schools. I have interacted with students of various ages in South Korea, Turkey, Chicago, and Atlanta. Most recently, I have been teaching practice-based studio and lecture courses at Columbia College Chicago. What connects these experiences and underpins my teaching philosophy is a belief that students become empowered and curious learners through storytelling and a dialogic pedagogy. Students take to their passions when they share openly and critically with one another through classroom discussions, scholarship, and media artifacts. As an educator, my primary goal is to spark students' curiosity and provide them with the training they need to express themselves best. It is a balance of theory and praxis—a constructivist approach that, along with pedagogists Paulo Freire and bell hooks, influences my teaching.
Classes Taught
Communication and Culture
Students explore the forms and functions of contemporary social media, creative commons, fake news, mixed, augmented, and virtual reality as they relate to identity and community. By utilizing the techniques of communication, performance, and cultural studies students interrogate online social games, social networks, news media, and emerging media applications. Students learn a number of media theories and how to use them to explore an artifact of their choice.
Serious Games and Simulations
Serious Games and Simulations guides students through the design and development of games for education, politics, argumentation, and community engagement. Students learn how to implement procedural rhetoric, turn structural and community dynamics into game mechanics, and model natural forces. The course is split into two parts. The first part is the development of a board game based on ethnography and community research. The second part is the creation of a simulated ecosystem using Unity.
Immersive Environments Series
This series of four courses are core to the Immersive Media BA I developed. They introduce students to the history of immersive media, design principles for augmented, mixed, and virtual reality. Students also engage with the humanist and STS issues connected to immersive media. Throughout four courses, students develop many projects from SparkAR filters to VR interactive narratives in Unity. The series ends with a capstone class where students build an immersive media project from vision to distribution.
Usability and Research Evaluation Methods
Explores usability principles for digital interactive communication content. Students learn how to collect user requirements for new media content systems, core usability and user experience principles, usability testing processes and data analysis, iterative testing principles and processes, and techniques for development of usable interactive content communication systems. Principles of design research and visual communication are discussed in the context of interaction design, cognition and user behavior, and concept validation.
Nonlinear and Interactive Stoyrtelling
Explores principles of nonlinear storytelling and non-traditional narrative architectures and experiences. Introduces students to frameworks for interactive storytelling. Students will learn these basic principles through applied communication design, and explore the design process for testing and creating narrative experiences that rely upon user interaction. Students learn Twin and Snap's Lens Studio to produce two portfolio pieces.
Unity and XR
In this course, students master XR development in Unity, blending AR and VR design principles with 3D mathematical foundations. Students explore scripting with C# and Unity to customize 3D components and construct interactive virtual environments. The course also covers the use of rendering pipelines for realistic effects and explains the XR ecosystem workflow. Students showcase their skills in a diverse portfolio of digital samples.