Katherine Isbister

Work and Education
Presently: Postdoc Researcher at NTT Open Lab
1998 Ph.D. Communication Dept., Stanford University (see c.v.)
1995-1998 Character and interface design consulting (see resume)

Research Interests

• Design and research of social interfaces to technologies, especially character interfaces.
• Designing virtual community spaces and tools.
• Human-computer interface design.
• Exploring these areas through art work

Recent Publications and Talks

Recent Talks

• October 1998 -- Workshop on Embodied Conversational Characters. Presented Ph.D. study on how people read personality in interactive characters.
• October 1998 -- Lifelike Characters Conference. Poster discussing Ph.D. research.
• July 1998 -- Visiting artist, Robert Morris College of Art, Chicago, Il. Worked with students to create a live chat space on-line, which was displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the LiveLive project.
• August 1997 -- IJCAI Workshop on Embodied Animated Characters, presented research on the importance of an agent's social role in setting the appropriate situational tone for visitors to an online space.

Recent Publications

Isbister, K. & Nass, C. (in press). Consistency of Personality in Interactive Characters: Verbal Cues, Non-Verbal Cues, and User Characteristics. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies.

Isbister, K. & Ishida, T. (1999). Designing for Social Interaction in Cyberspace, IPSJ (Information Processing Society of Japan) Magazine 40(6), 569-574.

Isbister, K., & Layton, T. (1995). Agents: What (or who) are they? In J. Nielsen (Ed.), Advances in Human-Computer Interaction 5 ,67-86. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing Corporation.

Contact Information

Katherine Isbister
Open Lab
NTT Communication Science Laboratories
2-4 Hikaridai, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun
Kyoto 619-0237 JAPAN
Email: kath@digitalcity.gr.jp