Friday, August 1, 2025

Previous | Next

• Designing games for children with autism via AR
• Changing the way people explore Africa
• What's open and closed over the long weekend
• Notes on this august occasion

Designing games for children with autism via AR

What if we could teach emotional and social skills in a joyful and playful manner? This is the vision of Yue Lyu (left), a third-year PhD student. Together with her supervisors, Professors Jian Zhao (inset on right) and Keiko Katsuragawa (middle), she is creating AI and AR-based technology to empower autistic children.

This is an excerpt of an article that originally appeared on the Cheriton School of Computer Science website.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is something that is experienced in vastly different ways by Autistic people. Some Autistic children have idiosyncrasies with behaviour, emotion and communication, which may cause them to be excluded or to face barriers to access services. Because our society is not great at including Autistic people, many must adapt or conform to be accepted.

Although there are methods that can equip children with ASD with social and emotional skills, like behavioural therapy, they are often expensive, time-consuming and inaccessible. One promising method is neurofeedback training (NFT), a computer-based program that gives real-time feedback to help people regulate their own brain activity, particularly cognitive, emotional and behavioural functions. However, NFT is only available in clinics.

Even the most cost-efficient methods, such as teaching emotions through card sorting or slide decks, fail to capture autistic children’s attention — calling for more engaging and immersive activities.

What if we could teach these skills through interactive games instead? Fortunately, Yue Lyu, a PhD student in computer science, is leveraging GenAI and augmented reality (AR) to create personalized home-based intervention tools. For this transformative work, she has received more than $140,000 in various awards and scholarships, including the NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship (Doctoral), Ontario Graduate Scholarship (OGS) and the Autism Scholars Award. The latter was given to three students at the doctoral level last year.

Yue designed and conducted her project according to inclusive research principles, specifically including Autistic people in the research design. She also included caregivers, educators, and autistic families throughout the interview and design process.

Her visionary plan could solve a major educational gap: the Ontario Autism Coalition reports that investments in ASD support could potentially save $1.4 billion for Ontario taxpayers. For example, she led EMooly, a tablet-based game that explores emotional recognition through interactive storytelling. It actively involves caregivers, who play a key role in an autistic child’s development.  

When the child and their caregiver first open EMooly, they are prompted to take a photo of a household object. They must also select a cartoon character and an emotion from EMooly’s database. Using the power of AI, EMooly will generate a story based on these elements. If the users select a cup, panda, and surprise as their respective object, character, and emotion, they will watch a story where a panda receives a cup and experiences surprise. The child and their caregiver will take turns practicing emotions using their tablet’s camera. Next, they will see various emoticons pop up on their screen, which are overlaid with their surroundings. In this case, the users must identify the correct surprise emoticon.

Yue led a user study where she recruited 24 autistic children and their caregivers to use EMooly or a slide deck, a more traditional method. They also had to complete a quiz on emotion recognition before and after using each tool. Notably, the group that only used EMooly performed the best. Their scores were 15 per cent higher than their pre-quiz scores, while the slide deck group’s scores dropped by per cent. This difference shows that EMooly’s immersive experience can successfully capture and sustain a user’s attention, something that traditional methods couldn’t effectively achieve.

Read the full article on the School of Computer Science website.

Changing the way people explore Africa

A Girls Trip Tours group with an all-women safari guide team in Botswana.

This is the latest story from the 2025 issue of Waterloo Magazine.

Eyitemi Popo (MDEI ’16) founded Girls Trip Tours to empower and connect future leaders through travel experiences in Africa.

Eyitemi Popo.

Inspired by her Master of Digital Experience Innovation from Waterloo, Popo aims to create safe, intentional spaces for women, especially Black women, to explore and thrive. Her company fosters lifelong friendships, confidence and business collaborations.

“We’re not just running trips but creating a platform for transformation and collective growth,” she said. 

Popo’s strategic women-only, women-led partnerships across the continent of Africa ensures tourism dollars go directly towards empowering African women and girls.

Learn more about how her business model secured her a spot on a Forbes’s list of social entrepreneurs.

What's open and closed over the long weekend

So it has come to this, the August Civic Holiday long weekend. Monday, August 4 is a statutory holiday, and most University operations will be closed for the long weekend. Here are some operational changes to note:

Most Food Services operations will be closed on the holiday Monday, or are closed for the remainder of the term. The only exception for Monday, August 4 will be The Market at CMH, open from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. Check the Locations and Hours page for more details.

Print + Retail Solutions operations will be closed on Monday, August 4. Check out the locations and hours page for more details.

Athletics and Recreation facilities will be closed Sunday, August 3 and Monday, August 4 for the long weekend. Visit the Facility Hours page for more details.

The Visitors Centre will be closed on Monday, August 4. No tours will be running during this time.

The Dana Porter Library will be open from 12 noon to 6:00 p.m. on holiday Monday, and the Davis Centre Library will be open from 12 noon to 3:00 a.m. The Library Help Desk and the "Email Us" system will be monitored from 12 noon to 6:00 p.m. on Monday. Check the Library's hours page for more details.

The Student Life Centre, Turnkey Desk SLC and Flock Stop are all open 24/7 throughout the long weekend, including the holiday Monday.

Turnkey@DC is closed and reopens on September 3.

The Daily Bulletin will return on Tuesday, August 5.

Notes on this august occasion

We're in summer's endgame now as the spring term has wound down and students are busy cramming for the final examination period that begins after the reprieve offered by a long weekend. 

It was pointed out to me yesterday that missing from the career highlight article on Mario Coniglio was one of his notable achievements as co-author of Manitoulin Rocks! Rocks, Fossils and Landforms of Manitoulin Island alongside the late Dr. Paul Karrow, Waterloo's first Earth and Environmental Sciences Department Chair, and Peter Russell, Curator Emeritus of the Earth Sciences Museum. The book is a step-by-step resource to explore and understand notable landforms and fossils on Manitoulin Island. You might say that rocks!

Dr. Coniglio explains the features of carbonate rocks found on Manitoulin Island to a group of undergraduate students during a third-year field trip.

Information Systems & Technology (IST) has published the latest in the Atlassian Blog Series entitled Coming soon: New Feature in Jira Service Management: Choose How You View Your Queues!

Enjoy the long weekend!