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Do our self-perceptions influence our preferences when designing avatars in the games we play? GI members Mitchell Loewen and Dr. Lennart E. Nacke, with Dr. Christopher Burris of St. Jerome’s University, co-authored a paper about the psychology of preferences toward game avatar styles.

Spearheaded by Drs Aynur Kadir and Shana MacDonald, Games Institute members from multiple disciplines have teamed up to offer a day-long training for incoming Research Assistants. The training will involve a series of sessions exploring interdisciplinary research topics, each led by a professor, graduate researcher, or GI alum.

Dr. Daniel Harley, GI faculty member and Assistant Professor at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, co-authored an article entitled, "Sound Beginnings: Learning, Communicating, and Making Sense with Sound" with Drs. Kurt Thumlert and Jason Nolan.

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the research landscape. In this series, we explore how our community is navigating their daily lives and innovating to adapt their research and collaboration techniques.

Fempower.tech published an article entitled "A call for respect, inclusion, fairness, and transparency in SIGCHI" for the Feminisms in Design special issue of ACM's Interactions magazine. The article advocates for structural change in SIGCHI that recognizes the interlocking nature of marginalizations:

Dr. Lennart Nacke is the Principle Investigator for three Mitacs partnership grants, awarded October 2020, to advance research for new industry partners, AlphaLabs, MLD Solutions, and Wiggles 3D.

Allen Bevans, User Experience (UX) Research Manager for Stadia at Google, presented "Building User Experiences for a cloud-native gaming platform" for Dr. Lennart Nacke's Design and User Experience of Interactive Games class, DAC 305.

Allen Bevans provided insights gained from his experience working as a games user researcher and UX researcher first at Electronic Arts, then Google play, to his current position with Google Stadia, the cloud gaming platform.

How do we tell complex, compelling stories on large, interactive touch screens typically used for public information displays, for collaborative work in businesses, or, when available, for classroom purposes in educational institutions?

CHI Play 2020 is an international Human-Computer Interaction and games conference hosted by SIGCHI. Click the links below to check out the Games Institute member research presented at the conference:

Working online video with a person on a screen (from Canva stock images)

The Human-Computer Interaction labs at the Games Institute, and at the University of Waterloo overall, emphasize collaboration between and within groups so any one student is uplifted by the entire network of HCI researchers.

Current students

"My avatar – my self?": Mitchell Loewen's thesis published in Frontiers in Psychology

GI Members collaborate to offer training for Research Assistants

Daniel Harley co-authors "Sound Beginnings: Learning, Communicating, and Making Sense with Sound" in Music Educators Journal

Research during COVID-19: VR Exergames for Older Adults Living with Dementia, ft. John Muñoz

Fempower.tech publish "A call for respect, inclusion, fairness, and transparency in SIGCHI" in ACM's Interactions magazine

Dr. Lennart Nacke launches Mitacs partnerships with AlphaLabs, MLD Solutions, and Wiggles 3D

Google Stadia's Allen Bevans guest lectures on Games in the Cloud for Dr. Lennart Nacke's UX class

Dr. Neil Randall receives a CFI grant to launch the StoryBoard Lab

Games Institute member research at CHI Play 2020

Research during COVID-19: Collaborating during CHI Season

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Research Centres