James Kerrane
Hello! I am James Kerrane, an undergraduate student studying a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science at Georgia Tech in Theory & Media with a minor in Spanish. I've built a music theory wiki for high school and middle school students, a chrome extension that captions images on the web using machine learning for those who are visually impaired, and other projects. I also pursue research in Animal-Computer Interaction and Cognitive Psychology.
In my free time, I love making singing and making music videos, running, and playing Dungeons & Dragons.
This is my personal website, where I have posted some of the things I have been working on! Please reach out at hi@jameskerrane.com if you want to get in contact with me.
Research
Domestic cats often lack the stimulation and opportunities for predatory play that their wild counterparts experience. We created Pawjections, an interactive game system designed to encourage cats to engage in active play and give them agency in their own enrichment.
This session highlighted how collaboration between computer science and social science classes can lead to the exploration, development and implementation of VR programs for the purpose of experiential learning, such as transforming original research design pitches (incorporating a VR component) from a Psychology class into a usable VR product.
In this re-imagined lesson experience, participants participated in an emulation of the cross-curricular, project-based learning, including developing an idea for VR program development. Participants also experienced the original, student-developed VR program for this year's selected student design.
Abstract
Liminal spaces are a subset of spaces that induce subconscious anxiety, leading to potential discomfort, diminished attention, and other adverse effects. Previous studies have created similar environments by removing items, adjusting lighting, and altering human presence; however, many studies overlook the potential of object orientation to increase the liminality of a setting. In our experiment, we utilized expertise from an online Unity certification course and research design plans from our school's Senior Psychology course to develop a VR simulation for experimental purposes. During our data collection process, the control group experienced a set of commonly known spaces (classroom, grocery store, and library) without any alterations. In contrast, the experimental group would see these spaces with disoriented objects and no other changes. Both groups were prompted to advance through each room as they pleased by pressing a large button. During the experiment, we tracked the participants' time spent in each room and provided a survey asking about comfort levels in each space. Our findings revealed that students were less comfortable in disoriented spaces, yet, oddly, they spent longer in those spaces. We attributed this correlation to students being unfamiliar with those environments and staying longer to explore the new spaces. As society emerges from COVID-19, bringing people back into public spaces, our discoveries about space orientation and comfortability could support return initiatives. On a broader scale, this demonstrates VR technology's potential within psychological experimentation and broader research implementation, revolutionizing human data acquisition.