MONTRÉAL, Nov. 9, 2017 /CNW
Telbec/ - HEC Montréal is very proud to announce the creation
of its first-ever industrial research chair. The NSERC-Prompt
Industrial Research Chair in User Experience will be headed up
by professors Pierre-Majorique Léger, Chairholder and Co-Director
of the Tech3Lab at HEC Montréal, and Marc
Fredette, Full Professor in the Department of Decision
Sciences. Six major firms are also Chair partners and will help
underwrite the research, drawing on its findings to optimize their
customers' user experience. They are D-Box,
Deloitte, Desjardins Group, JDA
Software,
Sobeys and Vidéotron.
In addition, the Chair is receiving financial support from both
levels of government, i.e. the Natural Sciences and Engineering
Research Council of Canada
(NSERC) and Prompt, the ICT research and innovation
consortium, whose main financial partner is the Quebec Ministère de
l'Économie, de la Science et de l'Innovation.
Total financing for the Chair over five years will be
$7.6 million.
The six partner firms will be working closely with the research
team organized by professors Léger and Fredette, by providing
real-life issues for the experts to use in accelerating and
enriching user experience measures, while providing the companies
with advanced, customized expertise.
The tests done on interfaces of all kinds, websites and mobile
applications will allow the researchers to analyze users' emotional
and cognitive response. The partners will be providing their
platforms and their unique relationships with their customers, in
return for which the researchers will furnish them with research
and analysis tools reflecting the latest scientific advances in
this field.
"The NSERC is proud to support this promising collaboration
between some of Canada's top
academic researchers and their industry partners, to improve the
experience of users of rapidly evolving digital technology. The
spinoff from their work in fields ranging from e-commerce and
mobile applications to entertainment and education will make
Canada a leader in user experience
and improve Canadians' daily lives," says NSERC President
Mario Pinto.
"Prompt is very proud to support this Chair devoted to advanced
R&D in the fields of human-machine interaction and data
science, with an initial three-year investment on the order of
$1.8 million. This funding will
go toward inventing new modes of interaction and developing the
user interfaces of the future. The Chair is a highly valuable asset
that will equip Canadian firms to develop and optimize their
interfaces and better position themselves against international
competition," says Luc Sirois,
Executive Director of Prompt.
"I am especially pleased that the first-ever industrial research
chair at HEC Montréal is the fruit of this kind of partnership,
bringing together six major firms in the field of innovation and
both levels of government. They see this pooling of resources and
efforts by the business community, government and academia as a
tremendous generator of concrete progress, one that will propel
Quebec and Canada as a whole to the global forefront of
advanced technological research," says HEC Montréal Director
Michel Patry.
For Professor Léger, the partner companies will provide the
researchers with highly valuable raw material. "These cases, based
on the firms' actual experience, are priceless resources for our
researchers. They will force us to push our limits and find
solutions to the problems presented, or to identify the most
promising avenues for constantly improving the user experience."
Professor Fredette agrees, saying "This Chair is another fine
example of how data science is being used in advanced research in
Montréal, this time to analyze huge quantities of
neurophysiological data gathered through user experience research.
In addition, the funding will let us offer scholarships to over one
hundred students and hire and train people who are highly
specialized in user experience and data valorization."
The partners come from a wide variety of industries, giving the
researchers access to a particularly diverse set of cases. In
return, this will place partner firms' user experience teams at the
heart of a vast research program and let them draw on the very
latest scientific advances to meet their specific needs, as well as
the experience of firms in industries different from their own.
It's a virtuous circle and a win-win situation for everyone –
including users!
About HEC Montréal
HEC Montréal is an internationally
renowned business school, with over 13,000 students. In addition,
it trains more than 7,000 executives and managers every year.
The School holds many prestigious accreditations, and offers some
60 programs of study from the bachelor's to doctoral levels. It is
one of the most active business schools in Canada in terms of research, thanks to 28
research units, including 27 chairs (6 of them Canada Research
Chairs). With a faculty of 272, HEC Montréal offers programs in
several languages and attracts students from nearly 140 countries.
Since its founding in 1907, the School has trained more than 86,000
students in all fields of management. HEC Montréal is celebrating
its 110th anniversary this year.
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SOURCE HEC Montréal