The use of data-driven software systems—such as voice assistance systems, drones and applications that recommend music or videos—has grown significantly in recent years. While the technology behind them is becoming more powerful, the systems suffer from a user experience (UX) design crisis that limits their ability to enhance people’s lives.

The work of the Canada Research Chair in User Experience Design of Data-Driven Systems aims to investigate, create and evaluate a new set of UX design-support techniques and tools that harness the power of data-driven systems. Prof. Cheng and his research team are identifying, modelling, detecting and making use of UX design patterns that capture user actions that are frequent in data-driven systems. They are leveraging these patterns to explore tools that could help UX designers organize and retrieve design artifacts, like sketches, mock-ups and storyboards. Their work will advance UX design research and support the UX design of data-driven systems.