Heather O'Brien is an Associate Professor at the iSchool, UBC, where she teaches and researches in the area of human information interaction. Dr. O'Brien is best known for her work in the area of user engagement, where she has contributed numerous publications, including two books, Why Engagement Matters: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives and Innovations on User Engagement with Digital Media (edited with Paul Cairns, 2016) and Measuring User Engagement (authored with Mounia Lalmas and Elad Yom-Tov, 2014), as well as the User Engagement Scale (UES), an experiential questionnaire that is used internationally to understand digitally mediated user experiences. Her current research is supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant, SSHRC Partnership Development Grant. and UBC Hampton Research Fund Award.
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