Thomas D Grace

Research Keywords: Game-Based Learning, Design Research, Online Community, Governance, Play, Systems Thinking, Game Design, Learning

Contact: tgrace(at) uci (dot) edu

Links

The work I’m interested in explores how technology shapes the ways we connect, learn, and play, and how we can design it to support creativity, collaboration, and community. More specifically, I study the infrastructures that sit behind games and platforms, from rules and mechanics to policies and governance structures, and how their designs affect interaction and community participation. My research is interdisciplinary by nature, often sitting at the intersection of information systems, human–computer interaction, game design, and the learning sciences, although I tend to see those as useful categories rather than hard boundaries.

I recently completed my Ph.D. in Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where I worked with Professor Katie Salen Tekinbaş in the Made With Play Lab. My dissertation, The Infrastructures of Play: Sociotechnical Conditions for Interaction, Imagination, and Safety, grew out of my interest in how technology scaffolds connection and creativity. It examined how rules, policies, and regulations govern play across digital and physical environments, showing how infrastructures, from codes of conduct in multiplayer games to design frameworks in museums, shape participation, trust, and imagination.

Beyond my dissertation, I’ve looked at how friendships and communities form in multiplayer games, and I ran a study on Twitch to understand how design features and business models structure participation in live-streaming. I also collaborated on projects through UC Irvine’s Connected Learning Lab that explored wellbeing in digital play, interactive museum design, and youth-centered digital policy.

Before my Ph.D., I was a lecturer in Information Systems at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, where I taught programming, system design, and project-based courses. My early research included experiments on digital game-based learning and studies of how connected technologies influence quality of life in African smart cities.

Looking ahead, I’m continuing to explore how technology, and especially play, can be designed and governed to support meaningful, safe, and creative experiences across online platforms, games, and public spaces.

Publications List

Grace, Thomas D. The Infrastructures of Play: Sociotechnical Conditions for Interaction, Imagination, and Safety. Diss. University of California, Irvine, 2025. [PhD Dissertation]. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/16g41773

[Honorable Mention] Thomas Grace D, Christie Abel, and Katie Salen Tekinbaş. 2025. Learning Curiosity through Play: Exploring the Role of Games and Interactive Design in Museums. In Proceedings of the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 655, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706598.3713164

Tekinbaş, K. S., Grace, T., Jagannath, K., & Larson, I. (2024). Designing Care(full) Online Play Communities for Youth . In C. James & M. Ito (Eds.), Youth Wellbeing in a Technology Rich World. Retrieved from https://wip.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/6kj51uj4

Thomas D Grace, Christie Abel, and Katie Salen. 2023. Child-Centered Design in the Digital World: Investigating the Implications of the Age-Appropriate Design Code for Interactive Digital Media. In Proceedings of the 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference (IDC '23). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 289–297. https://doi.org/10.1145/3585088.3589370

Thomas D. Grace, Ian Larson, and Katie Salen. 2022. Policies of Misconduct: A Content Analysis of Codes of Conduct for Online Multiplayer Games. Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 6, CHI PLAY, Article 250 (October 2022), 23 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3549513

Du, Y., Grace, T. D., Jagannath, K., & Salen-Tekinbas, K. (2021). Connected Play in Virtual Worlds: Communication and Control Mechanisms in Virtual Worlds for Children and Adolescents. Multimodal Technologies and Interaction, 5(5), 27. https://doi.org/10.3390/mti5050027

[Honourable Mention] Abel, C. A., & Grace, T. D. (2020). Designing dyadic caregiver-child personas for interactive digital media use. Proceedings of the Interaction Design and Children Conference, 198–204. https://doi.org/10.1145/3392063.3394391

Cohen, J., & Grace, T. (2019). Motivational and Occupational Self-efficacy Outcomes of Students in a BPM Course: The Role of Industry Tools vs Digital Games. In F. Daniel, Q. Z. Sheng, & H. Motahari (Eds.), Business Process Management Workshops (pp. 567–579). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11641-5_45

Mudarikwa, G., & Grace, T. D. (2018). Agile system development methodologies usage and acceptance in South African banking firms: An exploratory analysis. Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists, 248–257. https://doi.org/10.1145/3278681.3278711

Cohen, J., Bancilhon, J.-M., & Grace, T. (2018). Digitally connected living and quality of life: An analysis of the Gauteng City-Region, South Africa. The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, 84(1), e12010. https://doi.org/10.1002/isd2.12010

Grace, T., & Cohen, J. (2016). Business Process Management and Digital Game Based Learning. Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) 2016, San Diego CA https://aisel.aisnet.org/amcis2016/ISEdu/Presentations/35

Grace, T. (2016). Digital game-based learning: Effects on students’ perceptions and achievements in a business process management course [Master’s Thesis]. http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/handle/10539/22119

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