Prof Brendan Walker


Prof Brendan Walker
NameProf Brendan Walker
Job titleProfessor of Creative Industries
Research institute
Primary appointmentDesign Engineering & Mathematics
Email addressb.walker@mdx.ac.uk
ORCIDhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-9000-0554
Contact categoryAcademic staff

Biography

Biography

Brendan is Professor of Creative Industries at Middlesex University, and a former Senior Research Fellow in Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art and Principal Researcher in Computer Science at the University of Nottingham.

Brendan Walker is Founder Director of Studio Go Go who are on a mission to turn neglected amusement rides into unusual and brilliant experiences - whether it’s avant-garde VR revamps for mechanical fairground classics, or new content for their growing number of location-based VR swing simulators.

Brendan originally trained and worked as an aeronautical engineer, before practicing in Industrial and Interaction Design in the Museum and Public Art sectors. Insights into these worlds of entertainment inspired Brendan to write The Taxonomy of Thrill (2007), which is a guide for designing thrilling experiences for any context and where Brendan first revealed ‘The Walker Thrill Factor’ – a scientific formula for thrill. In 2020 he delivered a prestigious Royal Institution Discourse about the art and science of thrill.

Brendan is known as a Renaissance Showman - a technology-inspired performance artist described by The Times as "the world's only Thrill Engineer". His multi-faceted Thrill Laboratory performances have provided popular entertainment for audiences from the Science Museum, London, to Disneyland, Paris. His work has been featured at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, MoMA, NY, and on TV shows across the world. He became a regular consultant on future attraction design for Merlin Entertainment, and has worked across all of their brands developing concepts for second gate business opportunities. He continues to consult on experiential brand design and activations for blue chip clients such as Durex (Reckitt Benckiser), Royal Caribbean and Nissan.

Education and qualifications

Grants

Prizes and Awards

Research outputs

Abstract machines: overlaying virtual worlds on physical rides

Tennent, P., Marshall, J., Brundell, P., Walker, B. and Benford, S. 2019. Abstract machines: overlaying virtual worlds on physical rides. CHI '19. Glasgow, Scotland 04 - 09 May 2019 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). pp. 1-12 https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300811

Archives of thrill: the V-Armchair experience

Passmore, P., Tennent, P., Walker, B., Philpot, A., Le, H., Markowski, M. and Karamanoglu, M. 2017. Archives of thrill: the V-Armchair experience. Lindeman, R., Bruder, G. and Iwai, D. (ed.) ICAT-EGVE 2017. Adelaide, Australia 22 - 24 Nov 2017 European Association for Computer Graphics. pp. 125-132 https://doi.org/10.2312/egve.20171349

Performing research: four contributions to HCI

Taylor, R., Spence, J., Walker, B., Nissen, B. and Wright, P. 2017. Performing research: four contributions to HCI. CHI '17. Denver, USA 06 - 11 May 2017 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). pp. 4825-4837 https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025751

Uncomfortable interactions

Benford, S., Greenhalgh, C., Giannachi, G., Walker, B., Marshall, J. and Rodden, T. 2012. Uncomfortable interactions. in: Proceedings of the 2012 ACM Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI '12 ACM. pp. 2005-2014

Breath control of amusement rides

Marshall, J., Rowland, D., Rennick Egglestone, S., Benford, S., Walker, B. and McAuley, D. 2011. Breath control of amusement rides. in: Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '11 New York ACM. pp. 73-82

Analysing the playground: sensitizing concepts to inform systems that promote playful interaction

Rennick Egglestone, S., Walker, B., Marshall, J., Benford, S. and McAuley, D. 2011. Analysing the playground: sensitizing concepts to inform systems that promote playful interaction. in: Campos, P., Graham, N., Jorge, J. and Nunes, N. (ed.) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2011 : 13th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Lisbon, Portugal, September 5-9, 2011, Proceedings, Part I Springer.

Recommending rides: psychometric profiling in the theme park

Egglestone, S., Rowland, D., Whitbrook, A., Greensmith, J., Walker, B., Benford, S., Marshall, J., Kirk, D., Schnädelbach, H. and Irune, A. 2010. Recommending rides: psychometric profiling in the theme park. Computers in Entertainment: Theoretical and Practical Computer Applications in Entertainment. 8 (3), pp. 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1145/1902593.1902600

Performing thrill: designing telemetry systems and spectator interfaces for amusement rides

Schnädelbach, H., Rennick Egglestone, S., Reeves, S., Benford, S., Walker, B. and Wright, M. 2008. Performing thrill: designing telemetry systems and spectator interfaces for amusement rides. in: Proceeding of the twenty-sixth annual CHI conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI '08 New York ACM. pp. 1167-1176
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