Safe Interactions Lab
Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, University of Waterloo.
How might we create useful, usable, and delightful digital experiences while enabling secure and safe interactions?
Professor Leah Zhang-Kennedy leads the Safe Interactions Lab focusing on understanding and developing digital experiences that improve people's understanding, knowledge, and technology practices through research and design. We use human-centred research methods and tools that span multiple disciplines in human-computer interaction (HCI), user experience (UX), and user interface (UI) design to answer research questions relating to digital literacy, online privacy, and computer security. Our goal is to develop and nurture a collaborative multidisciplinary research team with diverse backgrounds to approach these issues from various perspectives.
Research Projects
Visit our Projects page to learn more about our current and completed research projects.
Research Areas
human-computer interaction (HCI), usable privacy and security, user experience (UX), child-computer interaction, information visualisation, persuasive technology
News
Safe Interactions Lab welcomes 3 new members
In Fall 2024, we have three new Master's students joining the Safe Interactions Lab: An Bella Chen, Shanza Shanza, and Michaela Valiquette.
Bella was a summer exchange student participating in the Mitacs Globalink Undergraduate Internship program in 2023 and returning to Waterloo for a Master's degree to research the potential of virutal reality technology for telehealth. Shanza is new to Waterloo and is interested to research and develop tools that prevent discriminatory behaviour in undereducated and non-weird communities. Michaela started a company after her undergrad, and is now pursuing a Master's degree in HCI to further her professional interests and skills. I look forward to working with these talented students with diverse research interests.
Welcome everyone!
Dr. Leah Zhang-Kennedy featured on CPI Spotlight
Over the past six years as a member of the Waterloo Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (CPI), Leah has been at the forefront of research in privacy conscious design and improving cybersecurity practices. From teaching students to creating novel design solutions to leading events, Leah takes full advantage of opportunities that cross her path in order to create maximum impact. However, her career trajectory was not always so crystal clear. Learn more about Leah and her career path in this article.
Journal paper accepted at CSCW
Our paper, “Navigating the Gray: Design Practitioners’ Mental Processes and Rationalization of Privacy Dark Patterns,” has been accepted for publication in the proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction (CSCW). The manuscript will appear in the ACM Digital Library in April 2024.
Contact
Leah Zhang-Kennedy
Assistant Professor, Interaction Design and User Experience Research
Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business
University of Waterloo
E: lzhangkennedy@uwaterloo.ca