Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Whitson, for receiving the 2026 Arts Award for Excellence in Service!
When Sara Selvaggi (GBDA ‘20) and Nicole Pasek (GBDA ‘20) work together at Skip, they are focused on more than pixels and interfaces. Their work supports real people, in real environments, often under pressure.
Today, Sara is a UX Researcher and Nicole is a Senior Product Designer at Skip/Just Eat Takeaway. Together, they work on Shop + Pay, a service model that allows customers to order groceries, retail items, and pharmacy essentials in addition to restaurant food. The work is fast-paced, practical, and deeply human. It also reflects the interdisciplinary foundation they built at the University of Waterloo Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business.
Three student-designed installations will be featured within Destination Stratford’s Welcome Centre.
46 students from the course “GBDA 412 – Special Topics in Digital Culture” were challenged to create large-scale interactive media art pieces for the Lights On festival, inspired by the Thirteen Grandmother Moons stories, an Indigenous knowledge tradition. Students drew inspiration from this tradition to create installations that explore light as a symbol of knowledge, community, and continuity.
Dr. Ville Mäkelä and colleagues at Waterloo’s Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business are redefining education through Canada’s first large-scale VR-based 3D design course. Using tools like Gravity Sketch and immersive headsets, their innovative approach blends creativity and technology, preparing students for the future of digital design. This initiative sets new standards for interactive learning and showcases Waterloo’s leadership in VR education.
100 years after The Great Gatsby, GBDA alum Kristen Fajardo releases a speculative, queer cyberpunk reimagining of the American classic. Her background in UX and the tech industry shaped both the novel’s content and the entrepreneurial strategies behind its launch.
At the 2025 Celebration of Arts, Dr. Noorin Manji was honoured with the Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching for her outstanding contributions to pedagogy and mentorship.
Henriëtta van Niekerk and her startup Skrimp.ai secured the E-Launch Award of $5,000 from the University of Waterloo's Enterprise Co-op program.
The Stratford School is proud to share that Dr. Daniel Harley is among the 2024 Outstanding Performance Award recipients.
Congratulations to Dr. Noorin Manji for receiving the Arts Award for Excellence in Teaching! Dean Alexie Tcheuyap and the Arts Honours and Awards committee are pleased to announce the results of the 2025 Arts Awards for Excellence in Service, Teaching, and Research. The awards recognize outstanding contributions from faculty and staff, with Dr. Manji being honored for her exemplary teaching over the past five years. The awards will be presented this Fall at the annual Celebration of Arts event.
Researchers at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business challenge the belief that Virtual Reality (VR) inherently fosters perspective-taking in their article, “Seeing Is Not Thinking: Testing capabilities of VR to Promote Perspective-Taking.” They argue that VR's potential as an "empathy machine" relies on intentional design that promotes active cognitive engagement. Through experiments, they found that perspective-taking is enhanced when users are prompted with specific tasks, encouraging them to consider the character's viewpoint. This study, which received the Best Paper Award at IEEE VR, underscores the importance of purposeful VR design to effectively harness its empathetic capabilities.