A headshot of Ekat Durmanova
Master’s student Ekaterina Durmanova (Ekat) has been a part of the GI community in more ways than one since 2016. Her first moment of exposure was through the Undergraduate Game Dev Club, where she participated in a Game Jam that was captained by, then student, Dr. Cayley MacArthur (Stratford School). The Jam was captivating enough for Ekat to return to the GI time and time again; first as a volunteer for other Game Jams and, eventually, participating as a captain herself alongside fellow GI Members: Arielle Ginsberg (Management Science and Engineering), Alex Glover (Systems Design Engineering), and Dr. MacArthur.
With the intent of a game jam being to create a game from scratch in two days, Ekat reminisced on how stressful managing the event could be. “It’s one of the most taxing things you can volunteer for but also one of the most rewarding," she said.
Beyond the excitement of game jams, Ekat started getting more involved in research at the GI by working as a researcher assistant with Dr. Lennart Nacke (Stratford School). With a growing interest in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and her experience in game design, she started her Master’s of Engineering in Fall 2019, and officially joined the GI as a Master’s student in 2020. She was an active community member and enjoyed opportunities to collaborate with others on projects like “Curioscape: A Curiosity-driven Escape Room Board Game” with fellow GI member, Joe Tu (Systems Design Engineering). Their creation allows players to start the game without needing a rule book.
A Curioscape player using a RFID card and interacting with the first iteration of the game
Some of her favourite GI memories were games nights, midday yoga breaks, and the sense of community that was cultivated there. But, one of the difficulties Ekat encountered during this time was the inability to conduct research in person for her Master’s thesis due to the Covid-19 Pandemic. Her thesis “The Effects of Juicy Game Design on Exergames” explored how visual embellishments in exercise games (exergames for short) can affect participant enjoyment. But how can you study exergames without in person studies? To resolve this, Ekat relied on questionnaires and used GIFs to convey different levels of visual embellishments. Even though her research process wasn’t how she envisioned it to be, she successfully defended her thesis in December 2022.
After the defense, Ekat was ready for a change. She was ready to step out of academia and look for opportunities in industry. Through networking at the GI, she was offered and accepted a position at Ubisoft, Germany (making her another GI alum to join the company along with Dr. Stuart Hallifax (A), now in Montreal!) Her new position is User Experience Research Tools Coordinator (say that ten times fast), and on a day-to-day basis, she optimizes research processes through the tools and software Ubisoft uses for development. When asked about her job, she said, “I like to find ways to puzzle piece all these tools together and make them work more fluidly for the developers in Ubisoft.”
The biggest value Ekat will take away from the GI is to be open to her wacky and weird ideas. Coming from the Faculty of Arts during her undergrad to Engineering in her Masters, she learned that these fields aren’t that different. “Collaboration is so magical and it’s so easy to get stuck in a box at UW,” she says. “If you take the people around you as they are rather than focusing on their academic background, you will find very interesting projects that may be more impactful.”