Tech³Lab becomes the leading UX lab in North America!

January 20, 2015

HEC Montréal’s Tech³Lab has become the largest user experience (UX) research laboratory in North America, thanks to a $2 million grant under the research infrastructure program of the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) John R. Evans Leaders Fund and the research infrastructure funding program for Quebec educational institutions of the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la recherche scientifique!

This grant will make it possible to upgrade the infrastructure and capabilities of the laboratory, which conducts applied research in management science and specializes in studying the interactions between technological interfaces and users.

“This new funding will let us add six research environments for non-intrusive data collection from individual participants or interactive groups of participants, in an authentic environment where they are using information systems,” explain the co-Directors of Tech³Lab, Professors Pierre-Majorique Léger (Information Technologies) and Sylvain Sénécal (Marketing). “Each of these new environments can be used to carry out research that is currently impossible at Tech³Lab.”

The new environments will make it possible to observe and analyze user experiences in various contexts, e.g.:

• employees collaborating with one another while individually using a management software program
• consumers using tablets while watching television
• pedestrians using their smartphones
• players in multiplayer game contexts

These different environments will let researchers conduct advanced user experience research. The work done at Tech³Lab has already led to a number of discoveries benefiting HEC Montréal students and partner firms of the laboratory and adding to general scientific knowledge about user experiences.