A 2026 CHCCS/SCDHM Achievement Award of the Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society is presented to Prof. Nicholas Graham for his sustained creative contributions to HCI, computer supported cooperative work, and interactive game development.
Nick Graham is a professor at Queen’s University where he leads the EQUIS Laboratory for innovative gaming technologies. He holds a Doctorate of Engineering in Software Engineering from the Technical University Berlin (1995) where he explored declarative programming for user interface development. He has contributed to the launching of two new ACM SIGCHI conferences, acting as the inaugural General Chair and Steering Committee Chair for the ACM Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS) in 2009 and then as the inaugural Technical Program Chair of the ACM Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (CHI PLAY) in 2014. He is a member and former chair of IFIP Working Group 2.7/13.4 on User Interface Engineering.
Dr. Graham’s work lies in the intersection of software engineering and human-computer interaction. He has made contributions to the design of software architectures for interactive systems, to simplifying the programming of consistency maintenance in multiplayer games and other groupware systems, and to the modeling of adaptive user interfaces.
Nick’s latest work focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of games that seek to do more than entertain. In collaboration with Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital, his group developed the Liberi Exergame, enabling children with neurodevelopmental disorders to engage in physical activity together. Liberi has been trialed in homes, schools, and clinical environments. Most recently, he has worked in demonstrating how augmented reality can support experiential learning, as shown through the Northeye game for teaching medieval history to elementary school children.
Many of Graham’s research projects involve close collaboration with experts in domains in which he and his students apply game technology in novel ways to support learning or training activity intended to improve health outcomes. These include physical therapy after spinal cord injury, physical activity for children with Autism Spectrum Disorder or Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and post-operative exercise for children with cerebral palsy. A key element is carefully matching the difficulty of the game to the abilities of the players to increase engagement and improve motivation.
Dr. Graham has engaged in innovative teaching at Queen’s, including acting as academic co-director for the Master of Digital Product Management program jointly run between Computing and Business, and creating the Game Development option in Computer Science. This has been recognized through the MDPM and the Howard Staveley teaching awards.
