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What do we mean when we say “Interdisciplinary”?

“Interdisciplinary” has recently become an ill-defined buzzword across academia and industry. At the Games Institute, we used to shuffle through multiple prefixes including multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and interdisciplinary based on what felt right for the project. Throughout my co-op term, we often discussed which term best suited our ethos, mission, and debated how to define our boundary-crossing identity.

New research by Rina R. Wehbe and collaborators from the Cheriton School of Computer Science and the Games Institute at University of Waterloo explores territoriality in playful applications. In the paper, Wehbe et al. investigates the relationship between digital and physical spaces as they apply players’ understanding of shared space, collaboration, and social behaviours.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing excerpts from Pamela Maria Schmidt's award-winning Co-op Report. Currently Research Projects Facilitator at the Games Institute, Pam received the English Co-op Report Award in recognition of her significant contribution to our community during her co-op terms as Operations Assistant (S'19) and Assistant Project Manager (F'19). 

Stay tuned; Not only does the report showcase the brilliance of one of our researchers and staff members, it offers spectacular insight into the Games Institute culture. Pam discusses how and why we use games to facilitate interdisciplinary crossovers, and this springboards into a fantastic discussion on how we articulate interdisciplinarity in the fibres of what we do.

Haptics are becoming a staple for high-end technologies (ex. iPhones, the Google Pixel, and Nintendo Switch), as they enhance user experiences by incorporating multisensory feedback, like touch-tones, movements, or vibrations. Despite this, developers currently lack a framework for understanding how to best incorporate and improve them.

Dr. Shana MacDonald, Communication Arts professor and SSHRC-funded intersectional feminist media researcher, gave a talk as part of the “COVID-19: Ask our Experts” lecture series, hosted by the University of Waterloo. The focus of MacDonald’s talk revolved around social media during the pandemic: how are people using social media to combat loneliness? how is news traveling? and how can we make the internet a more positive place for people?

“I wasn’t really planning any game in particular,” says Oliver Schneider, Assistant Professor in the Department of Management Sciences, “I just knew I wanted to check out the Game Jam since I’ve seen how important it is to the GI culture".

Marisa Benjamin, the GI's Research Communications Officer, and Eric Blondeel, Co-Founder of ExVivo Labs, teamed up to design and deliver a Knowledge Translation Workshop for the Concept by Velocity Graduate Student Stream

Enriched narratives can reduce cybersickness in virtual reality (VR) for people with little-to-no video game experience, according to a new study by researchers from the University of Waterloo’s Multisensory Brain and Cognition (MBC) Lab in the Department of Kinesiology and the Games Institute.

Wisdom science, an interdisciplinary field of studies that looks at sound judgment and decision making, suggests that people can be guided by rational or reasonable standards when making gaming decisions. How can we better understand the difference between rationality through studying behaviour in socially-oriented games?

NB: This blog article was written by Grace VanDam who worked here as our wonderful Operations Assistant from September-December, 2019