Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

User Experience (UX) professionals are now routinely involved in the design and evaluation of the millions of apps that we use daily, to ensure they create an optimal experience. To maintain Canada's leadership in software and IT, industry needs to innovate in the field of UX by developing high-quality, easy-to-learn and easy-to-use interfaces. Industry and academia are currently facing scientific and industrial challenges requiring urgent attention: as technology evolves rapidly, so, too, should the UX evaluation methods associated with it. To accurately capture the user's states in authentic usage contexts, research is needed to develop enriched UX measures, i.e. measures that enhance existing self-reported measures with measures that capture automatic or subconscious reactions to increase the measurement temporal resolution in order to grasp the full extent of the user's affective, cognitive and attentional states throughout their experience. Implemented in close collaboration with an associated Industrial Research Chair (IRC), this Collaborative Research and Development (CRD) Grant is focused on R&D in human-computer interaction and data science in order to gain an unparalleled, in-depth understanding of the field of UX, to measure the UX with a level of accuracy so far unattainable, and to create the technological innovations and analytical tools required to accelerate research in the field of UX for the purpose of helping Canadian firms develop and optimize their interfaces and compete on a global scale. It also aims to promote technological innovation, foster knowledge transfer and enhance the training of highly qualified personnel. Research is required to: i) offer a more precise evaluation of UX, ii) accelerate the enriched UX evaluation process in terms of execution and delivery and, iii) perform those evaluations in authentic and natural interaction contexts. Applying the new knowledge stemming from this collaborative research effort will enable our Canadian industry partners to improve their practices and interfaces and gain a unique competitive advantage. The research will also benefit Canada in that these optimized experiences will have an impact on the productivity and the quality of life of Canadians.