About Me
I am an Associate Professor of Emerging Media Design and Development, emerging-media scholar, and digital humanist. My research asks who gets to communicate, interpret, act, and establish meaning when computational systems actively participate in mediation. I study these questions across artificial intelligence, immersive media, and interactive systems, with particular attention to human agency, interpretive authority, participation, and the social and cultural contexts in which technologies are designed and used.
My work combines critical and interpretive scholarship, empirical research, community-engaged inquiry, research-through-design, and technical development. Building the systems I study helps me make more precise claims about their affordances and constraints while examining how computational technologies shape human experience at individual, community, and institutional scales.
Research, Design, and Technical Practice
My academic work includes more than 40 peer-reviewed publications and two books spanning emerging media, human-computer interaction, interactive digital narrative, extended reality, artificial intelligence, and community-engaged design. These include An Educator's Guide to Interactive Digital Narrative: Syllabi and Resources from Around the World and Augmented and Mixed Reality for Communities.
I also design and develop emerging-media systems, from research prototypes to real-world deployments. My applied practice has included projects for organizations such as ESSENCE, PIKE Electric, and Waste Connections. This experience informs my scholarship by exposing the technical, institutional, and organizational conditions through which emerging technologies move from experimental systems into everyday use.
Teaching, Mentorship, and Community Collaboration
At Ball State University, I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in emerging media, usability and research methods, interactive storytelling, human-centered design, and immersive media development. I also mentor graduate research and creative scholarship across AI, XR, interactive media, user experience, and related areas.
As a university-wide Coordinating AI Fellow, I contribute to institutional work around AI strategy, adoption, and responsible use. Across both my research and teaching, I prioritize reciprocal collaborations with community organizations, interdisciplinary researchers, and external partners. These partnerships allow me to investigate emerging technologies in situated contexts while working toward locally meaningful and publicly useful outcomes.
Education
Career History
- University-wide AI Coordinating Fellow, supporting strategic AI integration, cross-campus coordination, interface development, and faculty learning communities.
- Co-chair of the XR Certificate and contributor to graduate curriculum and emerging-media program development.
- Graduate research mentor supervising work in human-AI interaction, immersive media, user behavior, and interactive systems.
- Established the college's VR Storytelling and Usability Lab, creating research infrastructure for immersive-media development and human-centered evaluation.
- Mentored graduate and undergraduate researchers, expanded community-facing XR initiatives, and developed an emerging research and policy agenda around applied AI.
- Developed and helped lead undergraduate immersive-media and interaction-design curricula while directing XR production and research infrastructure.
- Integrated community-engaged emerging-media projects into teaching and research through partnerships with Chicago-area organizations.
- Designed and developed experimental augmented and virtual reality systems while researching XR interaction and experience design.
- Led student research teams and developed university-community partnerships around socially engaged AR storytelling.
Guiding Philosophy
My research, teaching, and creative practice are grounded in a digital humanist commitment to meaningful human agency, interpretation, and participation. I ask how the design, governance, and social contexts of technology can expand or constrain the ability of people and communities to participate in computational culture.
I approach emerging media as both a scholar and a builder. Designing and developing the systems I study helps me make more precise claims about their affordances, limitations, and consequences. Through research-through-design, critical inquiry, and empirical evaluation, I examine how AI, immersive media, and interactive systems distribute agency and interpretive authority among humans, communities, institutions, and computational systems. Community engagement is central to this work, and I prioritize co-design, locally situated knowledge, representational plurality, and reciprocal partnerships.
As an educator shaped by constructivist and dialogic pedagogy, I connect critical theory with experimentation and making. I encourage students to question what technologies make possible, what they make difficult, and whose interests their design choices serve. Students learn to combine technical fluency with ethical judgment, human-centered research, and thoughtful design practice.
My Research Methods, Design & Technical Practice
Human-Centered & Social-Scientific Research
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Experimental & Survey Design
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Qualitative Interviews & Thematic Analysis
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Mixed-Methods Research & Usability Evaluation
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Participatory Design & Research-through-Design
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Instrument Development & Human-Subjects Research
AI & Interactive Systems Research/Development
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Human-AI Interaction & Agency
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Generative & Conversational AI
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NLP & Computer Vision for Interactive Systems
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AI-Enhanced Interactive Experiences
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Data & Document Preparation for AI Workflows
XR Development & Spatial Interfaces
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Unity (C#), WebXR & Mobile AR
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XR Interaction & Interface Design
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Spatial Prototyping & Immersive UX
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Photogrammetry & Volumetric Capture
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Interactive Narrative & Experience Design
Technical Prototyping & Development
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Interactive Web & Mobile Prototyping
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JavaScript, Three.js, React & HTML/CSS
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Back-End & Data-Driven Application Development
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Rapid Prototyping & Iterative Development
Research Leadership & External Partnerships
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University-Wide AI Coordination & Strategy
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Research Lab & Program Development
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External Partnerships & Funded Applied Projects
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Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration
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Grant Development & Project Leadership
Teaching, Mentorship & Program Development
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Graduate Research & Thesis Supervision
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Emerging-Media Curriculum & Program Development
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Studio-Based & Project-Based Pedagogy
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Faculty Learning Communities & Professional Education
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Student Research & Creative Project Mentorship
Selected Research
My research develops across four overlapping strands. Interactive narrative provides a long-running space for questions of agency and meaning; immersive media makes those questions spatial and embodied; community-based work situates them within places and publics; and recent human-AI research extends them to computational systems that increasingly participate in interpretation, judgment, and action.
Complete Publications
- Merino, Francisco, Jorge Palinhos, and Joshua Fisher. "Introduction to the Special Issue: New challenges of interactivity in narrative creation." Aniki: Revista Portuguesa da Imagem em Movimento 13.2 (2026).
- Coker, K.K., Fisher, J.A. Human-AI collaboration in high-stakes domains: The moderating role of agency configuration in pharmaceuticals. Electron Markets 36, 53 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12525-026-00909-9
- Hong, Y., Kim, D., Li, T., & Fisher, J. A. (2026). “It’s Not Just Math and Culture”: Elementary Teachers’ Navigation of Culturally Relevant Mathematics in Racialized Contexts. Educational Studies, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2026.2655777
- Fisher, Joshua A. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Insights from Interactive Digital Narratives." International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling. Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-12408-1_5
- Fisher, Joshua A, 'Virtual Movements, Real Consequences: Confrontations of Augmented Reality Social Media in Public Spaces' (23 Oct. 2025), in Laeeq Khan (ed.), Oxford Intersections: Social Media in Society and Culture (Oxford, online edn, Oxford Academic, 26 June 2025 - ), https://doi.org/10.1093/9780198945253.003.0015.
- Li, Tong, Fisher, J., Youn Hong (2025). Promoting Culturally Responsive Teaching via Educational Game Design –Teachers as Educational Game Designers. In Rajala, A., Cortez, A., Hofmann, R., Jornet, A., Lotz-Sisitka, H., & Markauskaite, L. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Conference of the Learning Sciences - ICLS 2025 (pp. 1824-1828). International Society of the Learning Sciences. https://doi.org/10.22318/icls2025.203206
- Fisher, Joshua A.; Reyes, María Cecilia; Barbara, Jonathan (2025). An Educator’s Guide to Interactive Digital Narrative: Syllabi and Resources From Around the World. Carnegie Mellon University. Book. https://doi.org/10.1184/R1/28923917.v2
- 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.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
Industry and Academic Portfolio
Courses Taught
Communication and Culture
Explores social media, misinformation, emerging media, identity, and community through communication, performance, and cultural studies. Students apply media theory to analyze online games, social networks, news, and other contemporary communication artifacts.
Usability and Research Evaluation Methods
Examines human-centered research and usability evaluation for interactive systems. Students develop research questions, collect user requirements, design and conduct usability studies, analyze qualitative and quantitative evidence, and translate findings into iterative design recommendations.
Applied Research Lab
Students develop and execute applied research involving strategic information and communication design. Coursework includes research design, method selection, IRB protocol development, human-subjects research, usability evaluation, data analysis, and preparation of findings for scholarly and professional publication.
Creative Projects and Development Lab
Students design, prototype, and evaluate emerging-media projects, including interactive systems, story forms, news platforms, and multimedia applications. Projects integrate communication design, contextual inquiry, human factors, and user-centered design through a research-driven iterative process.
Serious Games and Simulations
Students design and develop games for education, advocacy, argumentation, and community engagement. Coursework introduces procedural rhetoric, systems thinking, simulation design, and methods for translating social, structural, and environmental dynamics into interactive mechanics.
Immersive Media Series
A core undergraduate sequence examining immersive-media history, interaction design, AR/MR/VR development, and humanistic and STS approaches to emerging technology. Students progress from prototyping and interaction design to the development, evaluation, and distribution of original immersive-media projects.
Nonlinear and Interactive Storytelling
Examines nonlinear narrative architectures and the relationship among authorial design, computational systems, and participant agency. Students apply interactive-storytelling frameworks to design, prototype, and evaluate narrative experiences across emerging-media platforms.
Unity and XR
Introduces the design and development of XR systems using Unity and C#. Students work with spatial interaction, 3D environments, rendering pipelines, interface design, prototyping, and iterative development while examining the broader technical ecosystem through which immersive experiences are constructed.