As the Canadian partner in this consortium, the HCI Games Group will focus on foundational research and usability studies to determine users’ needs and preferences for the context of an exergame for older adults. Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Lennart Nacke, a group of postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate researchers will systematically explore audiovisual, narrative, social, and accessibility-related factors in exergame design for older adults. The team already has prior expertise in human-computer interaction in game-based training, as exemplified in journal and conference publications on this topic by a number of the team’s researchers. The team also has connections to Toronto’s AbleGamers organization, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the accessibility of video games. By exploring these aspects in an exergame for cognitive and physical training, the team will develop knowledge and actionable insights for a rapidly emerging global market. Their direct contributions to the design and development of a tool to help older adults improve and recover cognitive and physical functions will potentially decrease costs of rehabilitation and will have a substantial positive effect on older adults’ health, quality of life, and wellbeing.

The Saskatchewan-Waterloo Games User Research (SWaGUR) program brings together 11 researchers from 7 departments at the Universities of Waterloo and Saskatchewan with the long-term goal of training 85 HQP in GUR in an interdisciplinary environment in collaboration with our industrial partners to serve the needs of an important part of Canada's information technology sector. The team of world-leading games researchers draws upon their interdisciplinary perspectives across science, engineering, social science, and humanities to apply academic learning (courses) and experiential learning (projects) in an industrially-relevant context to train HQP in both research and professional skills. The SWaGUR CREATE initiative addresses the Human Interaction with Digital Information research topic within the Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) target area. With many computing applications (advancing game technology), the proposed program will generate technologies and provide training in the deployment of technologies that change how people interact with digital information, both for entertainment games and for the rapidly growing serious games sector.