Digital Creativity Labs (DC Labs) at the University of York is a world centre of excellence in impact-driven games research. One branch of the research in DC Labs explores the possibilities of utilising games as a platform to help millions of people improve their STEM skills, such as data literacy, critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning.

DC Labs are seeking a highly motivated individual with experience in UX design (ideally in the context of learning) to lead the research surrounding novel interactive experiences that leverage data from competitive online games (also known as esports) and other sources to engage millions of players in data analysis. This work is closely aligned with WEAVR (http://weavr.tv/), a £5.8m R&D consortium project that explores immersive new ways of engaging the 380m esports fans worldwide. WEAVR will provide key assets, including high fidelity data from commercial games and machine learning technology that helps users’ interpretation of esports data. On the industry side, WEAVR is led by ESL (https://www.eslgaming.com/), the world’s largest independent esports company, which will provide exclusive access to leading domain experts, international events and millions of fans. This will create exciting opportunities for co-designing interactive experiences with and for the community to ensure relevance to the target audience. You will also work closely with the National STEM Learning Centre (https://www.stem.org.uk/) to co-create and evaluate teaching materials.

As the successful candidate, you will conduct individual and collaborative research in user-experience design. You will also design, prototype and evaluate easy-to-use visualisation tools that engage video game players in data analysis, allowing them to observe, evaluate and improve their own experience and performance in the games while fostering transferable skills, in particular Data Literacy, which can empower users in other areas of their lives, including education and career development. Specific duties will include: analysis and interpretation of research data; writing up of research results and dissemination through publications, seminar and conference presentations and public engagement and outreach activities; contributing to the identification of possible new areas of research.

You will have the opportunity to develop your career in the lively and stimulating environment of Digital Creativity Labs, including taking part in inter-disciplinary research activities, (co)supervising interns and PhD students and taking training to enhance entrepreneurial skills. You will have the unique opportunity to make the products of your research available to millions of people, as well as to conduct large-scale longitudinal user evaluation.

You will have a PhD in Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, Design, Data Science or other domain relevant to the position or equivalent experience, a record of excellent research, reflected in high-quality publications, and will bring an appetite for innovation across discipline boundaries and application domains. You will have good programming skills (e.g. C, C++, C#, Python, Java, Unity) accompanied by passion to develop applications that can be applied in real-world environments. Informal enquiries about this post may be directed to [email protected]

We are an equal opportunity employer and value diversity. We do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status, veteran status, or disability status.

The University is committed to promoting a diverse and inclusive community – a place where we can all be ourselves and succeed on merit. We offer a range of family friendly, inclusive employment policies, flexible working arrangements, staff engagement forums, campus facilities and services to support staff from different backgrounds.