Mark Hancock

I am an associate professor in the Department of Management Sciences in the Faculty of Engineering, where I direct the Touchlab, and the Associate Director of the Games Institute at the University of Waterloo. I am also cross-appointed in the Department of Systems Design Engineering and the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science.

My research goal is to design, develop and evaluate technology that can support new ways of interacting with computers and information. A central part of this goal is my interest in providing the ability for richer and faster interaction through the use of one~Rs body, hands, and fingers. The demand for effective interaction is increasing in response to the recent surge in commercial and research hardware that supports the sensing of more and more information about human movement in and around the surfaces ubiquitous in our everyday environment. While this technology has made it possible to interact in interesting and new ways, and even to carry this technology with us everywhere that we go, we have only begun to scratch the surface of what is possible and tend to rely on simple interaction, such as buttons and menus to interact with these new devices. My primary motivation is to harness some of the richness of interaction that is possible with our hands and bodies in how we interact with computers. In my research, I consider the fundamental nature of human movement and perception to help inform the design of interaction for new media.

• human-computer interaction
• computer-supported cooperative work
• tabletop displays
• large-screen displays
• smartphones
• multi-touch interaction
• 3D interaction
• collaboration
• narrative
• games

• 2010, Doctorate, Computer Science, University of Calgary
• 2004, Master of Science, Computer Science, University of British Columbia
• 2002, Bachelor of Science (BSc), Mathematics & Computer Science, Simon Fraser University

• MSCI 240 - Algorithms and Data Structures
  • Taught in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
• MSCI 730 - Human Computer Interaction
  • Taught in 2015
• MSCI 343 - Human-Computer Interaction
  • Taught in 2017
• MSCI 121 - Introduction to Computer Programming
  • Taught in 2017, 2019
• MSCI 720 - Topics in Information and Information Systems
  • Taught in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2019

• Nacenta, Miguel A and Hancock, Mark and Gutwin, Carl and Carpendale, Sheelagh, The Effects of Changing Projection Geometry on Perception of 3D Objects on and Around Tabletops, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 23(2), 2016
• Hancock, Mark and Collins, Christopher and Cook, Zachary and Sikes, Kalev Kalda and Paluka, Erik, The Simple Multi-touch Toolkit, , 2015
• Cook, Zachary and Paluka, Erik and Collins, Christopher and Hancock, Mark, The Simple Multi-Touch Toolkit, University of Ontario Institute of Technology Student Research Showcase. http://vialab. science. uoit. ca/wordpress/wp-content/papercite-data/pdf/coo2013a. pdf, 2013
• Chang, Y-LB and Hancock, M and Scott, SD and Pape, J and Graham, TCN, Improving the Social Gaming Experience by Comparing Physical and Digital Tabletop Board Games, , 2012