Xavier Ho (he/him)

Xavier Ho profile image

Dr Xavier Ho
Email: xavier@jtg.design
Monash: Researcher Profile
Cohost: @spaxe
Twitter: @xavier_ho

Hi! I'm an interdisciplinary creative technologist and interaction designer for queer communities.

I have a career spanning across queer games research, public interactive installations, and scientific data visualisation. I'm currently doing research at Monash Art, Design and Architecture, and I run a creative videography studio, Jump to Glide ↗.

In 2023, I hold a Junior Visiting Chair in Sexuality Studies at the Hunt-Simes Institute within the University of Sydney. During my visit, I am producing Pride at Play with a team of researchers, designers, and curators who play and make queer games, and furthering research in that area.

I'm one of the recipients of the inaugural CSIRO Medal for Diversity and Inclusion for my contribution in raising awareness for LGBTQIA+ issues in the organisation. I'm also a finalist in the 2020 Victorian Premier Design Awards for my data visualisation work. In 2022, I received a MADA Education Award for sustained excellence in quality education.

My most recent work is focused on queer independent games, and how videogames as art can become means of individual expression. The work includes "Public Art Park" (2022), "Infinite Colours" (2022), "Message for Queer Game Makers" (2021). My work has been exhibited at Melbourne Design Week (Victorian Pride Centre), and Testing Grounds (Queen Victoria Market). I co-authored with Cody Mejeur for Public Books in a piece titled "Queer Lives Are Not Side Quests", and organised a queer games panel at Games Connect Asia Pacific 2022.

Research

I am a firm believer in making research open and accessible to everyone, and so I provide as many links as I can below.

Queer Indie Games.
Pride at Play, FDG 2022, GCAP 2022.
We wanted to make indie games more accessible to the public, and tell their stories. I am the lead producer for Pride at Play (2023) that aims to put queer indie games on the map for games made in Oceania and Southeast Asia. The Arcade (2014) is a University of Sydney Union initiative where I curated Australian games for them. My research has been wonderful spending time doing this work. Publications and talks include Public Books, MSU Digital Humanities 2021, and interview.

Inspiration Networks in Game Design
. PhD Thesis, DiGRA Journal, Roguelike Universe.
I studied game jams both big and small to understand how ideas were remixed, linked, and manifested in videogames, and then applied what I call an "inspiration network" to map roguelike games. Publications, demos, and talks include Global Game Jam, ANSAC 2018, ICGJ 2017, Meaningful Play 2016, DiGRA Australia 2016, DiGRA Queensland 2016, DiGRA 2015, DiGRA Australia 2014, and Meaningful Play 2014.

Other notable publications include chartjunk for visualisation (led by Dr Phil Gough), and remote sensing (led by Dr Tim Malthus). For a complete list of my publications, activities, and scholarly profile, see my Monash page or Google Scholar.

Public Talks

I have given over 70 public talks since 2013 in both academic and industry events, and have helped organising 5 conferences including DiGRA 2017, SIGGRAPH Asia 2019, ICGJ 2020, FDG 2021, VIS4DH 2022 and VIS Arts Program 2023. I also ran 'Computer Graphics on the Web' meetup in Melbourne in 2016-2018.

2022
"Queer Games: A hopeful future" | Games Connect Asia Pacific
"More Than Side Quests: Queer indie games" | MADA Tangent Talks
"Passionately resilient beyond disciplines" | Asian Design Education Conference

2021
"Love About Food" | Melbourne Design Week

2020
"Research Through Visualisation" | Monash XYX Lab PhD Seminar
"3D Spatial Audio in Online Meetings" | CSIRO Future of Meetings

2019
"Building trust in data" | KPMG Diversity in Data
"Ethical Intelligence" | Monash Future Thinkers
"Machine Learning on Graphs" | MelbDjango
"The Emergence of the Demoscene" | SIGGRAPH Asia

2018
"Towards Visualisation for StellarGraph" | VisMatters
"Graph Visualisation: Elements for investigative analytics" | Canberra Datavis Meetup
"Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool" | Data61 Sci+Tech in the city
"Generative Art with Xavier Ho" | Elm Town Podcast
"Meet the Density Map" | Research Bazaar
"Elements of Data Visualisation" | C3DIS Conference
"WebGL: Latest Techniques" | SIGGRAPH Asia
"Let's Make Functional Generative Art" | YOW! Lambda Jam, Web Directions Code

2017
"State of the Art WebGL 2.0" | SIGGRAPH Asia
"Messy Sensor Data: A Programmer’s Cleaning Guide" | PyCon AU
"Visible Science" | SensiLab Forum

2016
"Embracing Interactivity in Data Visualisation" | CSIRO eResearch
"Design as Invitation to Interaction" | UNSW Seminar
"Roguelike-like-like: how a niche computer game genre exploded" | Nerd Nite Melbourne
"Smoke and Fire" | Digital Designer's Toolbox

2015
"The Client Wanted More" | Web Directions What Do You Know
"Social Distance of Idea Networks" | QUT Maths Seminar

2014
"Seeing Design" | Sydney University Guest Lecture

Latest projects

Writing