Chairholders

Profile

Pierre-Majorique Léger

Department of Information Technologies
HEC Montréal

Chair title

NSERC Industrial Research Chair in User Experience

Chair program

Industrial Research Chairs program

Role

Senior Chairholder since 2017

Summary

Today, everyone has heard "There's an app for that!" 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 experience in authentic usage contexts, research is needed to develop enriched UX measures. These measures supplement existing self-reported measures with additional measures that capture automatic or subconscious user reactions to increase the measurement temporal resolution. This allows us to grasp the full extent of the users’ affective, cognitive and attentional states throughout their experience. This Industrial Research Chair is focused on R&D in human-computer interaction and data science in order to gain an unparallelled, in-depth understanding of UX, to measure the UX with a higher level of accuracy unattained to date, and to create the technological innovations and analytical tools required to accelerate research in UX. These goals are for the purpose of helping Canadian firms develop and optimize their interfaces and compete on a global scale. The Chair’s program also aims to promote technological innovation, foster knowledge transfer and enhance the training of highly qualified personnel.

In close collaboration with seven supporting organisations, the IRC research program aims at the following key research objectives :

• offer a more precise evaluation of UX;
• accelerate enriched UX evaluation in terms of execution and delivery;
• perform those evaluations in authentic and natural interaction contexts.

Applying the new knowledge from this collaborative research effort will enable our Canadian industry partners to improve their practices and interfaces and to gain a unique competitive advantage. The research will also benefit Canada, as these optimized experiences will have an impact on the productivity and the quality of life for Canadians.

Partners

• Deloitte Digital
• Videotron
• JDA Software
• Desjardins General Insurance Company
• Tribal Nova (HMH)
• Sobeys
• D-Box Technologies

Contact information

Department of Information Technologies
HEC Montréal
Montréal, Québec

Email: pierre-majorique.leger@hec.ca

Website:
http://tech3lab.hec.ca/