3132 research outputs found
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Enhancing Non-Visual Emoji Accessibility: Inclusive Design with Blind and Low-Vision Co-Researchers
Full text linkEmojis present accessibility challenges for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals, particularly when navigating through screen reader interfaces. Interpretations of emojis have been extensively researched, highlighting the influence of cultural differences on individual comprehension, the need to proactively avert potential misunderstandings, to explore the denotations and connotations of emojis, and the use of emojis in online communication. This paper explores the challenges of emoji interaction for blind and low-vision (BLV) users within the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), focusing on the absence of visual cues and the resulting ambiguity in emoji affordance when using screen readers. This study examines communication barriers in digital environments, highlighting the need for user-centered design within Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs). It proposes strategies to improve emoji accessibility and non-visual communication experiences for BLV users, drawing on insights from semi-structured interviews, co-design sessions, and user testing
TRANSFORMING THE FUTURE: STRATEGIC AI ADOPTION FOR SMALL FOOD & BEVERAGE BUSINESSES
Full text linkSmall businesses witness their evolution and resilience in 2025 through technology, which serves as a catalyst for both innovation and sustainable growth, as well as adaptability. Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerges as a standout transformative tool because of its capacity to revolutionize business operations while enhancing customer engagement and productivity levels. Canadian small businesses in the Food & Beverage sector have not widely adopted AI, even though its potential looks promising.
Research shows that 30.1% of businesses see AI as a means to improve efficiency according to McKinsey’s 2025 (Economic Potential of Generative AI | McKinsey, 2025), report but a mere 7.5% of Canadian companies actually implement AI in their production processes according to the 2024 S. C. Government of Canada report (S. C. Government of Canada, 2024) only 7.5% of Canadian companies use AI for production processes. Information and cultural industries exhibit the highest AI adoption rate at 20.9% while professional services stand at 13.7% and finance at 10.9%, but accommodation and food service industries show only a 0.9% adoption rate because small businesses within this sector face implementation difficulties (S. C. Government of Canada, 2024). The 2024 survey and 2025 study by Edelman Mexico and Microsoft collected responses from Canadian small business leaders who have between one to 250 employees regarding their leading challenges and opportunities connected to AI adoption. The 2025 Edelman Mexico and Microsoft survey found that 78% of Canadian small business leaders with 1–250 employees are considering AI implementation while 65% are promoting AI tool adoption among their staff. Even as interest in AI grows among businesses, only 2% plan to expand their AI investment next year due to ethical concerns and cybersecurity risks along with difficulties in upskilling and unclear AI implementation processes. Yet, the potential gains are clear. Businesses testing AI solutions have reported increases in productivity and customer satisfaction as well as better work quality and employee engagement, achieving an average productivity improvement of 31% (New Study Reveals Canada’s SMBs Are Turning AI Curiosity into AI Action – Microsoft News Center Canada, 2024).
To bridge this adoption gap, this Major Research Project (MRP) explores the systemic challenges small businesses face in the Food & Beverage industry. It offers an iterative, design-led roadmap for responsible and scalable AI adoption. Guided by the Double Diamond Framework, a structured design-thinking methodology that alternates between divergent exploration (expanding research and exploration) and convergent decision-making (narrowing down findings and solutions). This approach ensures a holistic and iterative process, allowing for the identification of real-world barriers and the development of scalable AI adoption ideas. By analyzing emerging AI industry-specific constraints and policy frameworks, this research offers practical, evidence-based insights to accelerate AI adoption in the chosen niche sector. To ground the research in lived experience, fieldwork was conducted using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) across nine small businesses, revealing significant barriers to AI adoption, including unclear value propositions, digital skill gaps, and cultural resistance to change. These findings highlight the urgent need to address foundational challenges before AI implementation efforts can succeed at scale.
The outcome of this research is an AI adoption playbook known as “Biz Guide” which was developed using AI tools to function as a hands-on, strategic toolkit that supports small businesses throughout their AI transformation journey. The practical resource integrates case studies, sector-specific frameworks, curated tools, ethical checklists to support data-driven decisions and uphold human-centred values including artisanal quality and sustainability. Small business owners and industry stakeholders together with policymakers and technology providers will find this study full of vital insights. This study delivers actionable strategies which assist small businesses to bridge digital gaps and integrate AI inclusively for Canadian business success in an evolving digital marketplace
Story Forge: Transforming Books into Interactive Text- Adventure Games using Local Large Language Models
Full text linkStory Forge is a digital platform that transforms books into interactive text-adventure
games using local large language models (LLMs). This iteration adapts Mutiny Aboard the
HMS Bounty, a historical account of a late 18th-century revolt aboard a British merchant
vessel, allowing players to engage with the story dynamically. The platform employs a "Story
Card" system, a structured summary that the model references at each turn to maintain
narrative coherence. This approach ensures that character actions, plot progression, and story
structure remain aligned with the original material while still allowing for player agency and
variation in how events unfold.
Through iterative prototyping and testing, Story Forge demonstrates both the
strengths and limitations of LLMs in narrative design. The model enables dynamic storytelling
by allowing players to engage with the narrative in multiple ways, supporting new plot
branches and alternative story arcs. However, maintaining strict adherence to the source
material remains a challenge, as the AI occasionally deviates from the structured plot despite
the Story Card constraints. While the model effectively processes player input and generates
cohesive responses, its output (currently) lacks the nuance of human-authored storytelling,
sometimes resulting in dialogue and descriptions that feel repetitive or lacking in depth.
These findings highlight the potential of AI-driven narrative systems to create
interactive adaptations of existing stories while also revealing the complexities of balancing
structure and flexibility in procedural storytelling. This research provides a foundation for
further exploration into AI-assisted narrative design and offers insight into how large language
models can be used to enhance engagement, personalization, and interactivity in digital
storytelling
Trance-Forming Exhibitions: Fusing contemporary art, rave culture, and nightlife
Full text linkThis study proposes an experimental curatorial concept that explores how the elements and culture of raves can transform art exhibitions into immersive, inclusive, and transformative experiences. It looks at how people’s individual experiences and subjectivities interact within these curated spaces. By asking what art curation can learn from rave culture—how to stage a rave-like atmosphere in an exhibition, and how a “rave sensibility” can reshape art institutions and aesthetic experiences—this study aims to create both a theoretical and practical framework for this new exhibition format. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach, the research includes personal observations from attending raves, reviews of academic writing on rave culture and museum studies, and an analysis of three case studies featuring hybrid art-rave events. It argues that combining music, exhibition design, and technology can go beyond conventional aesthetic experiences and initiate new art movements, potentially empowering underrepresented groups and sparking renewed interest in contemporary art—especially among younger audiences. The appendix presents the lists of expenses and funding for the event, and a semiotic experiment proposal, highlighting possible ways to put these ideas into practice. Overall, this work lays a foundation for further innovation, suggesting that bringing together rave culture and art for such ephemeral autonomous events may lead the future of cultural production and curatorial practice
Feeling Scents: Enhancing Sensory Experience Through Multi-Modal Design
Full text linkWhile traditional design and communication practices often prioritize visual elements, this research investigates how integrating scent, touch, sound, visual, and spatial interactions can create more immersive and meaningful experiences. "Feeling Scents" examines the impact of multi-sensory design in perfume advertising, exploring how engaging multiple senses can foster a deeper connection between the audience and the product.
Using a Research through Design (RtD) methodology, this study involved the development of an interactive installation designed to engage multiple senses. Participants interacted with different materials, scents, and sensory triggers, enabling an in-depth exploration of how multi-sensory engagement influenced perception, memory, and emotional response.
This research highlights the potential for interactive, multi-sensory advertisements to create memorable, emotionally resonant experiences, fostering deeper engagement in both commercial and artistic contexts
Mamahood: Comic Adventures in Queer Parenting
Full text linkThis thesis combines graphic narrative and formal comics scholarship in book form. It explores the cultural norm of “good mother” and the role of comics as popular storytelling in shaping and expressing this norm, by situating a series of comic case studies of motherhood in conversation with the author’s own motherhood journey, told as an autobiographical graphic narrative. Ultimately, this project seeks to further broaden the range of mother icons available to those who take up or find themselves parenting as mothers and to challenge the sometimes oppressive weight that familiar images of “good” mothering can lay on their (our) shoulders
The Indestructible Author
Full text linkThis thesis examines the porous boundary between fiction and autobiography through my short story collection Essays & Fictions, in which I play the role of an unreliable narrator. Although my work in painting and photography appears confessional and autobiographical, it has always been highly edited, constructed and performed; part of the intentional creation of a character or persona. In Essays & Fictions I explored this further by commingling fact and fiction without a disclaimer. Using the book as a case study I explore the tensions between author and narrator, between artistic control and reader projection, and between the appearance of authenticity and the instability of truth. Rather than seeking to resolve the discomfort of this tension, I argue for its creative potential, engaging with the themes of fraud, con-artistry, and fakery that have informed both my visual art and literary practices. In reference to Roland Barthes’ proposal in “The Death of The Author”—that a text is best served by being severed from its author—I examine the ways in which readers seem hard-wired to connect an author to their text, and demonstrate that his proposal is haphazardly applied, and contrary to human nature. I further explore how shame—particularly around addiction—functions as a powerful force in shaping autofiction, and how readers can find meaning and connection in sentiment, through sincerity that is both performed and genuine
A House for Art: Inclusive Representation for Artists Labelled/with IDD in Canadian Art Galleries
Full text linkThis research aims to increase affirming representation of artists labelled/with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in art galleries in Canada. Using inclusive research, inclusive arts and curatorial dreaming methodologies, findings are organized into themes that illuminate the reasons for the lack of inclusive representation; the role that curators play both in underrepresentation and furthering inclusive representation; whether artists labelled/with IDD want to have their works in mainstream art galleries; and how representation can be done in a respectful way. Methods include one-on-one semi-structured interviews with curators, as well as group discussion and artmaking with artists labelled/with IDD. Finally, the study presents frameworks for moving towards more meaningful representation for artists labelled/with IDD
LUMIEA: Enhancing User Engagement in Storytelling: Empowering Personal Narratives through AI-Generated Environments and Tactile Interaction in Mixed Reality
Full text linkTraditional storytelling is often constrained by linear structures, limiting engagement and interactivity. This research explores how AI-generated MR environments can enhance storytelling through speech-driven interactions, real-time adaptive narratives, and Tactile feedback. Users speak to real-world objects, transforming them into AI-generated characters and 3D elements that shape the story. A GPT-4-powered LLM ensures narrative consistency, while haptic feedback enhances immersion.
Using Research Through Design (RTD) , this study develops prototypes to investigate how AI generated storytelling elements integrate with physical space and influence user engagement. The findings contribute to MR storytelling, AI-native games, and interactive media, reimagining storytelling at the intersection of human creativity and AI-generated worlds.
Keywords:
Mixed Reality (MR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Interactive Storytelling, Spatial Interaction, User Driven Narratives,Haptics, Speech-Driven Narratives, Generative AI, AI-Native Game
The Gray Area
Full text link‘The Gray Area’ is a thesis project that explores Danmaku culture, a form of interactive social engagement on video platforms where users post real-time comments that directly overlay on the video screens, creating a "barrage" of text. In recent years, this culture has reshaped social habits, evolving from a niche subculture—a smaller cultural group or community that exists outside the mainstream with distinct behaviors, beliefs, and localized cultural practices—into an integral part of mainstream culture in China.
However, under the dual pressures of cybercolonialism and commercialization, Danmaku culture has transformed. Its diversity and highly liberated forms of expression have gradually been marginalized or erased, resulting in a shift toward more uniform and standardized products of consumption.
This project is an autoethnographic exploration of Danmaku culture through my personal experiences as both a creator and participant in Danmaku culture. Through data analysis, personal reflections, and practical experimentation, the thesis delves into the rise and fall of Danmaku culture in Bilibili, China's—and arguably the world's—largest Danmaku platform. It focuses on examining its transformation under the pressures of the cultural industry of social media and the economic waves of globalization. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of Adorno and Horkheimer’s cultural industry, Mbembe’s necropolitics, and reception theory, this research reveals the contradictions of Danmaku culture between free expression and cultural control, as well as its adaptation and reconstruction in response to technological, policy, and societal changes. Through practical works and collection, this study reconstructs fragments of the disappeared Danmaku culture and explores its ephemerality and fluidity through interactive media installations