Students have a unique opportunity to spend a week in November, hacking hockey and innovating with 5G technology.
When investors logged in to Y Combinator’s virtual summer 2020 Demo Day, they saw Waterloo entrepreneurship in action. OpenUnit, a company founded by Stratford School alumni, took part in the event, among three other Waterloo/Velocity startups. Y Combinator brought together a class of 198 founders from 26 different countries.
Lennart Nacke, Associate Director Graduate (Stratford), gave a keynote speech for the virtual Mensch und Computer 2020 conference entitled "The Loot Box of Gameful User Experience".
Nacke provides a deep dive into gameful user experience (UX). He explains how non-game companies can leverage elements of game player experiences and preferences to enhance and evaluate their designs to improve the UX of their digital applications.
The University of Waterloo has become one of the first 5G smart campuses in Canada as part of a partnership with Rogers Communications that leverages the University’s global leadership in computing, engineering, creativity, and industry relationships.
This past year, GBDA introduced the third-year course GBDA 302, in which the final deliverable was a submission to a competition. “Map the System” has been available to Waterloo students for the past few years, but this is the first time where Waterloo has heavily pushed students to take part in it. Throughout the course, students were taught to use systems thinking as a guiding approach to understand complex global challenges. Map the System is a global competition that aims to challenge entrants to think differently about social and environmental dilemmas. Ever since its inception in 2016, Map the System has been using its platform to encourage a learning-first approach to social change – an approach where people take the time to understand existing beliefs and efforts before proposing new ones.
The internship is undoubtedly an exciting and important part of the Global Business and Digital Arts degree. After their third year of studies, GBDA students have the opportunity to work for a relevant industry company and to make valuable professional connections. Greg McIntyre, Digital Media Instructor at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business, recently sat down with Calvin Zheng, a fourth-year GBDA student, to talk about his internship experience – which is somewhat unique from the internship experience of most GBDA students.
Kiera McMaster, a recent graduate of the Global Business and Digital Arts program, is a recipient of this year's Arts Award for Excellence in Service. She’s been highly acknowledged and rewarded for her innovative, dedication and execution to the Resource Bins at University of Waterloo’s satellite campus in Stratford.
Since we couldn't send you off in person – here are our parting words for you, GBDA Class of 2020
Lennart Nacke, Associate Professor at the Stratford School of Interaction Design and Business and Director of the HCI Games Group at the Games Institute, has recently been awarded a $30k grant from Mitacs in partnership with TD Bank.