Everything started from the very beginning; When my father bought us our first desktop computer in 2006. I used to sit next to my older sister and watch her drawing with Microsoft Paint, or when she was editing her photos or using different softwares, I was there. I believe those days were my magical moments when I started to like designing and painting.
After years and years, I finally bought my own laptop in 2013 and was able to stick to my passion. I bought Photoshop software and began to implement everything I had learned over the past years. I remember my first so-called “Photoshopped Photo”, which was a picture of me and my father, and I had added a picture in the background to make it more attractive, which was not, at all!
In 2017 I entered Kharazmi University. In the second semester, I joined the Computer Science Students Association (CSA) and specifically the Sefr-O-Yek publication. There I had the chance to enhance my teamwork skills and learned a lot from wonderful people. I designed a lot of posters for events and also designed the Sefr-O-Yek’s covers and page layouts. After one year I became the head of the graphics team in the Sefr-O-Yek publication and had this opportunity to lead a team and learn important skills.
In my senior year, thanks to a dear friend, I accidentally found out about HCI and was immediately intrigued by its concepts. How great it is to have this chance to improve people’s lives through better designs. I started to learn more about HCI, User Experience Design and User Interface Design, so I took courses from Coursera in these fields and enriched my knowledge about HCI concepts.
I always had the thirst for learning more and more and to this day I always seek more knowledge in designing fields. I’m still studying UX Design and improving my design skills.
In January 2023 I entered Polytechnique Montreal University and joined the HCDLab to pursue my master’s in Computer Engineering.
In January 2023, I joined Polytechnique Montreal University and the HCDLab to pursue my master’s in Computer Engineering. There, I embarked on a fascinating project investigating users’ interactions with the emergent ChatGPT. This work led to an exciting project titled “Interrogating AI: Characterizing Emergent Playful Interactions with ChatGPT“.
Following this project, my interest shifted to one of my favorite topics: games, but from a new angle—creativity! We conceived an ambitious idea about games and creativity, one so compelling that I realized the remaining year of my master’s program would not suffice. With the support and encouragement of my supervisor, I decided to transition to a Ph.D. program.
Now, as a Ph.D. student, I am pursuing my dreams in the vast, beautiful ocean of games, but with a more serious goal. Our current research explores the realm of games and creativity, aiming to identify the factors and actors of creativity in sandbox games. I am incredibly excited and optimistic about this journey—so far, so good.