Keith Nesbitt

en

Dr. Keith Nesbitt completed his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics at Newcastle University in 1988 and his Masters in Computing in 1993. Between 1989-1999, Keith worked on applied computer research for BHP Research. His PhD examined the design of multi-sensory displays and was completed at Sydney University in 2003. After completing his PhD he accepted a faculty position at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, teaching computer games and programming between 2003-2006. In 2007 he completed a post-doctoral year in Boston working at The New England Complex Systems Institute before joining Newcastle University where he is currently employed in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computing. He has over 100 peer reviewed publications. His more creative work includes the lyrics for 5 albums and a musical and 12 painting exhibits. 

research

research expositions

  • Informative Sound Assists Timing in a Simple Visual Decision-Making Task (2018) author(s): Keith Nesbitt published in: Journal of Sonic Studies
    In this study, we examined the design of informative sound to assist timing in a simple, multimodal, game task. The game was initially designed as a series of eight-second, visual decision-making tasks. Players could respond quickly, with more risk, or wait longer for more information, thus reducing their risk of being incorrect. The player was scored by counting the number of correct attempts they completed in a five-minute interval. Waiting longer made the task easier but reduced the number of opportunities they had to repeat the task within the time limits of a game. In general terms, this game was designed to examine the way a player balances risk and reward. Unfortunately, the visual version of the game introduced the unintentional risk of a “safe” player waiting too long, timing out and failing to respond at all. This caused the risk-reward structure of the game to be out of balance. This study reports on the subsequent design and evaluation of a simple informative sound that was added to the game. The intention was to address this time-out issue without impacting other aspects of player performance. A within-subject experiment with 48 participants measured the response time, number of timeouts, and success rate of each player in a sequence of tasks. We measured player performance under three conditions: no sound (visual-only), constant (non-informative) sound, and increasing amplitude (informative) sound. We found that the increasing sound display significantly reduced timeouts when compared with the visual-only and constant sound versions of the task. Importantly, this reduction in timeouts did not impair the players’ performances in terms of their success rate or response time.
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