University of Waterloo | Human-Computer Interaction

University of Waterloo Human Computer Interaction

HCI at Waterloo


Waterloo HCI is a university-wide consortium of faculty and students who carry out research in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). Our current research spans areas such as gesture-based interaction, surface computing, gamification, citizen science, affective computing, crowdsourcing, software learning systems, digital interactive health systems, mobile interaction, gaming, virtual reality, interaction design, security, privacy, ethics, multimodal storytelling, user experience research and design, and intelligent software systems.

Waterloo HCI includes specialized research labs, faculty, and programs in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, Department of Systems Design Engineering, Department of Management Sciences, Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, Department of Communication Arts, and the Games Institute. Collaborations span these individual labs, and Waterloo HCI regularly meets through our Brown Bag series, which includes talks given by visiting HCI researchers.

We have past and on-going collaborations with companies like Google, Pinterest, Thalmic Labs (now North/Google), Scotiabank, Facebook, TD Bank, RBC Royal Bank of Canada, SMART Technologies, and many more; industrial research labs like Microsoft Research, Autodesk Research, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), Ricoh Innovations, and Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL); and institutions such as the Natural History Museum in London as well as countless international collaborations.

Current University of Waterloo faculty with active HCI research projects include: