Brenda Laurel is a defining figure in the field of computational media. Laurel was born on November 20th, 1950 in Columbus, Ohio. She originally pursued theatre at Depauw University and Ohio State University, but soon discovered her interest in personal computers. While studying for her PHD, Laurel’s friend showed her a computer imaging project he was working on which changed everything for her. She knew she wanted to be a part of this new revolution. That friend ended up creating the company Cybervision, which made early computer game consoles. He asked Laurel to go work with him to create interactive fairytales. Laurel worked at Cybervision for 3 years and then worked as a producer for Atari between 1980 to 1983. She went on to work for the game company Activision for the next two years before working as a creative consultant for major companies including Apple.
Throughout her experiences designing games, Laurel began to observe the role gender has in those who played video games. In the early 1990s, she became a member of the research staff at Interval Research Corporation where she undertook a research study to understand the relationship between gender and technology among youth. In 1996, she used her research and co-founded Purple Moon, a company that designed games specifically for girls, encouraging them to join the technology revolution. Since then, Laurel has worked as a professor and chair of design programs at both the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and California College of the Arts. She is currently an adjunct professor at UC Santa Cruz.
Laurel’s work is influential to the interaction design field as she helped reimagine the thinking around research being incorporated into the design process. She has also been a major advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games and a pioneer in developing Virtual Reality. Her work of inclusiveness within design is now a major consideration for many designers, as they are thinking through their user demographic, as well as the limitations and inclusivity they could be designing around. Laurel has written five books on various interaction and computational topics she encountered through her career. Her current work focuses on the use of distributed sensing and augmented reality in STE(A)M learning.
Brenda Laurel Bio, www.tauzero.com/Brenda_Laurel/BrendaBio.html.
Brenda Laurel. 14 May 2019, www.atariwomen.org/stories/brenda-laurel/.
Brenda Laurel. www.arts.gov/stories/magazine/2018/1/women-arts-galvanizing-encouraging-inspiring/brenda-laurel.
