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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Resume

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

Aug 2015 - May 2019 Ph.D. in Digital Media Georgia Institute of Technology
May 2018 Certificate of Science, Technology, and Society Studies Georgia Institute of Technology
Aug 2013 - May 2015 M.A. in Writing and Publishing DePaul University
June 2012 TEFL Certificate TESOL International Association
Aug 2005 - May 2009 B.A. in English Studies with a Minor in Political Science Illinois State University

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

Aug 2022 - Current Assistant Professor of Emerging Media Design and Development Center of Emerging Media Design and Development, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana
May 2022 - May 2024 Program Leader - Professional Certificate of AR/VR Development Tandon School of Engineering, New York University via Emeritus Inc., New York City, New York
Aug 2019 - July 2022 Assistant Professor of Immersive Media Department of Interactive Arts and Media, Columbia College Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
Aug 2015 - May 2019 Instructor and Graduate Research Assistant Digital Media Program, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
Aug 2013 - May 2015 Graduate Research Assistant Department of English, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois
August 2012 - June 2013 English Teacher Coşkun Nilüfer Academy, Istanbul, Turkey
Jan 2010 - May 2012 English Language Instructor Jeju National Teacher’s College, Jeju-si, South Korea

Industry Career History

Jan 2020 - Jan 2024 CTO The Immersive Path, Chicago, Illinois
Aug 2015 - May 2019 Founder and Consultant Fisher Digital Media, Atlanta, Georgia
Aug 2017 - May 2019 Board Member and Emerging Media Advisor FanBoard, Atlanta, Georgia
Aug 2012 - May 2015 Founder and CEO Appoet, Chicago, Illinois
Aug 2012 - May 2015 Digital Consultant SunBeam Marketing Solutions, Chicago, Illinois

Publications

2024

Portfolio

Your Voice Our Voice XR museum installation screen showing abstract visuals.
Your Voice || Our Voice An XR Museum Installation at the Museum of Contemporary Photography
Preview of Essence WebAR filter showing augmented reality effect.
WebAR Filter for Essence Developed for their Fesitval of Culture hosted in New Orleans in 2021
Screenshot of Infused location-based arts app interface.
Infused Location-based Arts Experience with Hyperlocal Notifications
Preview of What We Mean a mobile e-literature poetry application.
What We Mean Award Winning Mobile Poetry App
Preview of Invisibile Cities showing an augmented reality sculpture.
Invisible Cities World-scale AR Community Sculpture Garden
Preview of The Safet SHow showing an actor next to an XR prop of a tree.
The Safety Show A Devised Theater Performance with Augmented Reality
A picture of orange faces in the background of the Applied Theater with Emerging Media App, Our Reality
Applied Theater with Emerging Media A Multiplayer Mixed Reality Creative Suite for Community Storytelling
An illustration of a person on a countryside background in a preview of the Poet's Alamanac app.
The Poet's Almanac Poetry App that Provides Poems Based on the Weather
A preview screenshot of the City Saga application for loction based storytelling in Atlanta, Georgia.
City Saga
Location-based AR Cultural Heritage Experience
A red title screen with the letters ARES for a VR natural locomotion thriller.
ARES Natural Locomotion VR Thriller
Atlanta Bicycle Coalition 360-Videos 360 webVR Advocacy Films

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.

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Teaching Philosophy

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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.

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