SHARE Lab

Management Science and Engineering, University of Waterloo.

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Carl A. Pollock Hall

200 University Ave W

Waterloo, ON

The SHARE Lab (Social and Human-centered AI for Reimagined Engagement) at the University of Waterloo is led by Prof. Sharon Ferguson, and focuses on enabling successful human-human collaboration through thoughtful technology design. We conduct research at the intersection of the Future of Work, Human-AI Interaction, and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Prof. Ferguson an Assistant Professor of Management Science and Engineering at the University of Waterloo, and is associated with the Future of Work Institute, the Games Institute and the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. She completed her Bachelors and PhD in Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, supervised by Dr. Alison Olechowski.

We are always looking for enthusiastic students to join our lab! If you are interested, please fill out the interest form.

Areas of Interest Human-Computer Interaction | Flexible Working Practices | Collaboration and Teamwork | Collaboration Technology | Enterprise Communication Platforms | Artificial Intelligence | Engineering Education

news

Oct 12, 2025 Sharon will be at CSCW 2025 in Bergen, Norway supporting the presentation of Marjan’s work: Two Sides to Every Story: Exploring Hybrid Design Teams’ Perceptions of Psychological Safety on Slack
Jul 15, 2025 Sharon received a Learning Innovation and Teaching Enhancement (LITE) Seed Grant from the University of Waterloo to continue investigating student persistence in Artificial Intelligence.
May 26, 2025 In collaboration with Dr. Anastasia Kuzminykh and Paula Akemi Aoyagui, Sharon led a workshop entitled ``The Role of AI-Empowered Machine Subjectivity in HCI Tasks’’ at the 2025 Graphics Interface Conference in Kelowna, BC.
Apr 26, 2025 Our paper, “Matter of Perspective(s): Contrasting Human and LLM Argumentation in Subjective Decision-Making on Subtle Sexism” was published at CHI 2025, and presented in Yokohama, Japan by Paula Akemi Aoyagui.
Jan 01, 2025 Sharon officially started as an Assistant Professor in Management Science and Engineering at the University of Waterloo!

selected publications

  1. Something borrowed: exploring the influence of AI-generated explanation text on the composition of human explanations
    Sharon A Ferguson, Paula Akemi Aoyagui, and Anastasia Kuzminykh
    In Extended Abstracts of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2023
  2. Are We Equal Online?: An Investigation of Gendered Language Patterns and Message Engagement on Enterprise Communication Platforms
    Sharon A Ferguson and Alison Olechowski
    Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 2023
  3. No risk, no reward: Towards an automated measure of psychological safety from online communication
    Sharon A Ferguson, Georgia Zande, and Alison Olechowski
    In Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2024
  4. Circle Back Next Week: The Effect of Meeting-Free Weeks on Distributed Workers’ Unstructured Time and Attention Negotiation
    Sharon A Ferguson and Michael Massimi
    In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2024