From the waves to the redwoods, it's all happening here.

Games user researchers (GURs) use various methods to understand when a game is overloading its players. In games research where data-driven multimodal approaches are necessary to drive insights, the currently available tools to measure user load are coarse, one-dimensional, and often aggregated. The more dominant instruments, such as the Cognitive Load Scale (CLS) and the NASA-TLX, rely on player reflections of mental effort, primarily at the end of the playtest session, to distinguish different cognitive load types. This makes it difficult to: (1) understand where specifically players are struggling and experiencing high load, especially at the non-reflective subconscious level, (2) identify where that load is primarily coming from (e.g., perceptual clutter or difficulty/skill imbalance), and (3) examine user overload at scale, a crucial component of designing a game with large player bases. Telemetry is the behavioral record of what players are doing from moment to moment, in varying degrees of granularity. Telemetry has served as a powerful tool to understand player behaviors at scale, yet is rarely used to measure user load, especially through a validated multidimensional framework. This dissertation proposes that behavioral signatures of specific load constructs are observable in game telemetry, and a model built and validated on such telemetry can measure the distinct components of each load at the moment-to-moment granularity of individual play, as opposed to aggregated magnitude. This dissertation consists of three parts: (1) Validation through construct manipulation and reference measurement. Specifically, manipulating theoretically grounded load constructs and confirming that the proposed telemetry features respond as predicted, relative to the established measurements collected alongside them (e.g., NASA-TLX, pupillometry, secondary-task). (2) Individual-level validation through rigorous longitudinal examination of the same players repeatedly across many

Join us Wednesday, May 21st from 12:00 PM- 1:00 PM at California Coffee for an informative and uplifting workshop you won't want tfor suo miss! Our featured guest speaker, Manas S. Kshirsagar, AD, MS a NAMA Board Certified Ayurvedic Doctor with years of experience in holistic wellness and healing, will be presenting "Tools for Stress and Anxiety". With today's fast-paced world and the stress levels many of us are unduring, this workshop will offer valuable insight, practical tools and wellness strategies to help bring more balance, peace and calm into our daily lives. Lunch Special Available: Half Sandwich + Chips just $9.99 California Coffee, 9105 Soquel Dr., Aptos, CA 95003 cacoffeeaptos.com Thank you from myself Sylvia Reyes, and my amazing team for supporting our small business and community events!

Visit the IAS, UCSC’s premier art galleries, for our spring exhibitions. On view April 10–August 16, 2026 are three diverse and interdisciplinary shows: Libia Posada: Everything is Going Right , the first US solo exhibition by the Colombia-based artist and medical doctor; Gina Athena Ulysse: A Redwoods Rasanblaj , a site-specific and immersive exploration of the Haitian kreyol conception of rasanblaj; and Ronaldo V. Wilson: There Are No Words, But Melodies , a mixed-media exhibition emerging at the intersections of Black poetics, performance, and visual art. The IAS Galleries are open Wednesday-Sunday, 12 pm – 5 pm. Admission is free to the public. Libia Posada: Everything is Going Right Libia Posada’s first solo exhibition in the United States features installations, sculptures, and drawings meticulously constructed from surgical instruments, gauze bandages, crutches, used books, and domestic picture frames. The new and existing works in the exhibition powerfully stitch together the personal, social, and political disorders and afflictions that currently trouble the world, from the wars that resonate across the globe to the violences of aging in US prisons. Gina Athena Ulysse: A Redwoods Rasanblaj: Origins & Disentanglements The internationally-lauded work of humanities professor Gina Athena Ulysse is on view as a premier Faculty Spotlight Exhibition. The site-specific installation, produced in community from things collected, found, purchased and donated, centers on the Haitian concept of rasanblaj, a form of assembly and collage that transcends the formal use of materials to draw together people, spirits, and ideas. Ronaldo V. Wilson: There Are No Words, But Melodies Collage is both a material practice and a structural interrogation in the Faculty Spotlight Exhibition artworks by literature professor Ronaldo V. Wilson. In video, painting, and installation, layers and folds conceal and reveal, delving into the experience, both bodily and emotive, of living in time