Think ergonomics, and you might think of comfortable office chairs, user-friendly standing desks, and neck-supporting pillows. But what if ergonomics also meant a better video streaming experience, more intuitive touchscreens and user-friendly gesture recognition systems?

By exploring the highly interdisciplinary, and relatively new, field of multimedia ergonomics, SFU engineering science professor Ivan Bajic is advancing what is known about the complex interactions between human beings and multimedia stimuli.

Drawing from expertize in numerous fields, including signal processing, systems engineering, neuroscience and psychophysics, multimedia ergonomics examines how we experience the integration of multimedia through our senses.

Factors impacting this interaction include the size and type of display device, its resolution and frame rate, ambient lighting, the viewer’s visual acuity and mood. The goal is to help people work and live smarter by understanding, and ultimately optimizing, human-computer interaction.

In a world where connected devices and digital interfaces are ever more prevalent in daily life, integrated into our social lives, work places, vehicles and homes, understanding what this means for society seems more necessary than ever.