January 2018: Designing Interfaces that Compel and Motivate

January’s uxWaterloo event will be held at the Games Institute at University of Waterloo and involves both a talk and demos you can try. Feel free to join for either or both.

In the absence of performance or usability benefits, what compels people to interact with technology such as the red dot on our smartphone email app, the number of likes on our latest post, or the “just one more turn” button in our favourite video game? There are many lessons from psychology that we can learn about basic human needs, and what ultimately motivates interaction.

In this talk, Mark Hancock will give an overview of the basic human needs of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. He will discuss the idea that the success of novel technology is due largely to its ability to satisfy these basic human needs, and he will relate this concept to his lab’s research on virtual and augmented reality, 3D interaction on multi-touch tables, and applications in therapy, education, and gaming. You’ll also have the chance to try out some of the novel technology he’ll talk about, including a way of enhancing virtual reality experiences with the haptic experience of physical objects.

About the speaker

Mark Hancock is an associate professor in Management Sciences at the University of Waterloo, and Associate Director of the Games Institute. He is also a General Chair for this year’s ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2018). His research includes the design and development of interfaces and interaction techniques for mixed reality, multi-touch digital surfaces, and games, with a focus on physical-like 3D interaction.

Parking at University of Waterloo

Parking will be provided for free. You will need to get a scratch ticket to put in your car from a volunteer at the front door of the Games Institute (map).

Please register for this free event

Wednesday January 24, 2018
Talk from 5:30 to 6:30pm
Demos from 6:30 to 7:30pm
The Games Institute, University of Waterloo
175 Columbia St West, Waterloo, Ontario