MJ Johns

(they/them)

About MJ
MJ is an experience designer, educator, and researcher with a background in Entertainment Technology, Human-Computer Interaction, and Computer Science, and a passion for transformative immersive experiences. MJ is also the founder and creative director of indie game studio Astire Games LLC.

Project Keywords
CR = Climate Resilience
VR = Virtual Reality
SG = Serious Game
AR = Augmented Reality
IIE = Immersive Installation Experience
AI = Artificial Intelligence
MG = Mobile Game
EG = Exercise Game

Filter projects by:

Immersive Serious Game

Publications:

Best Paper Award M. J. Johns, Mário Escarce Junior, Alison Crosby, Yiyang Lu, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Edward F. Melcer, and Katherine Isbister. 2025. "Wildfire Games: A Community Approach to Designing Serious Games as Interventions for Wildfire Preparedness." Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact. 9, 6, Article GAMES006 (October 2025), 31 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3748601

M.J. Johns, Linda Hirsch, Yiyang Lu, Bridget Ho, Anna Toledo, Tristyn Lai, Krithik Dhandapani, Edward F. Melcer, and Katherine Isbister. 2025. "A Playful Wildfire Simulation System in Two Minigames." In Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY Companion '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 245–252. https://doi.org/10.1145/3744736.3749192

Junior, Mario Escarce, MJ Johns, Shivam Shukla, Darian Lee, and Yiyang Lu. "Fostering Collaborative Knowledge-Building and Resilience Through Player Discourse in Serious." In Serious Games: 11th Joint International Conference, JCSG 2025, Lucerne, Switzerland, December 4–5, 2025, Proceedings, p. 121. Springer Nature, 2025.

M.J. Johns. 2025. "Building Resilience Through Community-Centered Gameful Design." In Companion Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY Companion '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 265–269. https://doi.org/10.1145/3744736.3749327

Linda Hirsch, Daeun Hwang, Mj Johns, and Katherine Isbister. 2025. "HCI for Climate Resilience: Developing an Individual and Community Focused Framework through a Grounded Theory Approach." In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1740–1757. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715336.3735695

MJ Johns, Yael Nidam, Mário Escarce Junior, Linda Hirsch, Yiyang Lu, Bridget Ho, Anna Toledo, Magy Seif El-Nasr, Stephen Collier, Edward F. Melcer, and Katherine Isbister. 2025. "Translating Social Dilemmas into Gameful Designs for Wildfire Resilience." In Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 541, 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3720171

Alison Crosby, MJ Johns, Katherine Isbister, and Sri Kurniawan. 2025. "Designing FEVR: a VR Game for Wildfire Evacuation Readiness." In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (FDG '25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 51, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1145/3723498.3723766

Johns, M. J., et al. "Participatory Design of a Serious Game to Improve Wildfire Preparedness with Community Residents and Experts." Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3650735

Johns, M. J., et al. "Info Overload: A Cooperative Evacuation Game." arXiv preprint arXiv:2407.09559 (2024). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.09559

Johns, M. J., Eunsol Sol Choi, and Derusha Baskaran. "DinAR: Augmenting Reality for Sustainable Dining." arXiv preprint arXiv:2404.13272 (2024). https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2404.13272

Crosby, Alison, and M. J. Johns. "Supporting Wildfire Evacuation Preparedness through a Virtual Reality Simulation." Proceedings of the 30th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. 2024. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641825.3689521

JOHNS, MJ, and TYLER COLEMAN. "How an AI Generated Experience Impacts Negative Perceptions of AI." https://generativeaiandhci.github.io/papers/2024/genaichi2024_2.pdf

Johns, M. (2022). From Floundering to Flourishing in Large Enrollment Classes: Facilitating Semi-Automated Learning Communities and Peer-to-Peer Interactions. CG Scholar, EPSY 408 FA22. https://cgscholar.com/community/profiles/mjohns/publications/258296

Johns, M. (2022). Productive Struggle in Higher Education: With Particular Challenges for Large Enrollment Classes. CG Scholar, EPSY 408 FA22. https://cgscholar.com/community/profiles/mjohns/publications/257730

P. Navarro, M. Johns, et al., “Webz of War: A cooperative exergame driven by the heart,” 2013 IEEE International Games Innovation Conference (IGIC), Vancouver, BC, 2013, pp. 187-190, doi: 10.1109/IGIC.2013.6659125.

M. Johns, “The Transformative Power of Games,” 2020 Journal of Design and Creative Technologies Available on UT Library

M. Johns, “User Experience in the High Tech Era,” 2019 Journal of Design and Creative Technologies Journal Discontinued

M. Johns, “Student-Centered Learning: A Culmination of the 7 Affordances,” unpublished

M. Johns, "Experience Design for Virtual Reality," unpublished