About
I research team dynamics under the Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Games Intelligence (IGGI).
My goal is to understand how to build effective and cohesive teams -- where team members are committed to the task and have good relations with each other.
Research interests: Team Dynamics, Team Processes, Virtual Teams, Team Development
PhD Overview
With a global audience between 2.2 and 2.6 billion people, digital games provide a rich and unique environment to understand team dynamics. Two main questions drive my research:
How can we compose cohesive teams?
What are the behavioural indicators of team cohesion?
My research tackles these questions by looking at team dynamics in different types of team-based digital games. By focusing on identifying behavioural indicators of team cohesion in digital game teams, I can begin to understand the factors that affect team cohesion in this domain. In particular, I hope to uncover how to accelerate team cohesion development for more effective temporary teams and professional teams.
Education
PhD Researcher in Team Dynamics and Player Psychology, University of York
Working Thesis: Identifying Communication Patterns of Cohesive Teams
MSc Industrial/Organisational and Business Psychology, University College London
Thesis: Digital Games as Trust-Building Tools for Virtual Work Teams
BSc Psychology, University of York
Thesis: The Effect of Playing a Complex Digital Game on EEG Alpha Activity
Grants & Awards
Grants
Recipient: UK-Canada Globalink Doctoral Exchange Scheme (2020-2021)
This scheme supports a 3-month fully-funded research placement at The Games Institute, University of Waterloo, Canada where I will be carrying out a mixed-method study of the dynamics of team cohesion.
Awards
YorkTalks PhD Spotlight 2020 Winner, Faculty of Sciences
14th London Hopper Colloquium 2020, Finalist (Special Mention)
Non Peer-Reviewed Publications & Talks
Sometimes I write on Medium
Speaker, 'Effective Communication in Chaos: Lessons for Communication System Design in Team Play' at Games Research User eXperience (GRUX), 27 November 2020
Panelist, 'What can we learn from (e)sports teams?' Cosmic Conference 2021, 16 Sept 2021
Panelist, 'Present and Future Research in Esports', CHI PLAY 2021, 19 October 2021
Media
Science Media Malaysia Feature Not Just Fun and Games: Using Digital Games to Study Teamwork
Research Insider Talk What can we learn from digital game teams?
ITV Feature Gaming During Lockdown
Publications
Tan, E., & Cox, A. L. (2019, October). Trusted Teammates: Commercial Digital Games Can Be Effective Trust-Building Tools. In Extended Abstracts of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts (pp. 705-713).
Tan, Evelyn et al. (2021, January), Less is More: Analysing Communication in Teams of Strangers. In Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS)-54 Conference 2021.
Skills and Expertise
Python for data science
Experimental planning and design
Qualtitative Research (e.g. Interviews, Content/Thematic Analysis)
Data Analytics
SPSS and R
Highlight: Mini Project
At Global Game Jam 2019, I learnt how to create a basic agent-based model using Pygame. In this super teeny tiny GIF you can see several agents being randomly generated in different positions and moving randomly toward different locations. On the top left is an agent count displaying the number of agents being spawned.