Many research studies have investigated avatar embodiment and its effects on self-location, agency, and body ownership. Researchers have also investigated the effects of various external stimuli and ...avatar appearances during embodiment. However, the effects of body tracking fidelity while embodying an inverse-kinematic avatar are relatively unexplored. In this paper, we present two studies using a set of six trackers that investigate four levels of body tracking fidelity during avatar embodiment for male participants only: Complete (head, hands, feet, and pelvis trackers), Head-and-Extremities (head, hands, and feet trackers), Head-and-Hands (head and hands trackers), and No-Avatar (head and hands trackers; only controllers visible). Our results indicate that tracking the head, hands, and feet significantly increases the sense of embodiment and the sense of spatial presence when embodying an inverse-kinematic avatar for male participants.
Engaging users is a priority for designers of products and services of every kind. The need to understand users’ experiences has motivated a focus on user engagement across computer science. However, ...to date, there has been limited review of how Human--Computer Interaction and computer science research interprets and employs the concept. Questions persist concerning its conception, abstraction, and measurement. This article presents a systematic review of engagement spanning a corpus of 351 articles and 102 definitions. We map the current state of engagement research, including the diverse interpretation, theory, and measurement of the concept. We describe the ecology of engagement and strategies for the design of engaging experiences, discuss the value of the concept and its relationship to other terms, and present a set of guidelines and opportunities for future research.
This article presents the results of an empirical study that aimed to investigate the influence of various types of audio (spatial and non-spatial) on the user quality of experience (QoE) of and ...visual attention in 360° videos. The study compared the head pose, eye gaze, pupil dilations, heart rate and subjective responses of 73 users who watched ten 360° videos with different sound configurations. The configurations evaluated were no sound; non-spatial (stereo) audio; and two spatial sound conditions (first and third-order ambisonics). The videos covered various categories and presented both indoor and outdoor scenarios. The subjective responses were analyzed using an ANOVA (Analysis of Variance) to assess mean differences between sound conditions. Data visualization was also employed to enhance the interpretability of the results. The findings reveal diverse viewing patterns, physiological responses, and subjective experiences among users watching 360° videos with different sound conditions. Spatial audio, in particular third-order ambisonics, garnered heightened attention. This is evident in increased pupil dilation and heart rate. Furthermore, the presence of spatial audio led to more diverse head poses when sound sources were distributed across the scene. These findings have important implications for the development of effective techniques for optimizing processing, encoding, distributing, and rendering content in VR and 360° videos with spatialized audio. These insights are also relevant in the creative realms of content design and enhancement. They provide valuable guidance on how spatial audio influences user attention, physiological responses, and overall subjective experiences. Understanding these dynamics can assist content creators and designers in crafting immersive experiences that leverage spatialized audio to captivate users, enhance engagement, and optimize the overall quality of virtual reality and 360° video content. The dataset, scripts used for data collection, ffmpeg commands used for processing the videos and the subjective questionnaire and its statistical analysis are publicly available.
Stylized avatars are common virtual representations used in VR to support interaction and communication between remote collaborators. However, explicit expressions are notoriously difficult to ...create, mainly because most current methods rely on geometric markers and features modeled for human faces, not stylized avatar faces. To cope with the challenge of emotional and expressive generating talking avatars, we build the Emotional Talking Avatar Dataset which is a talking-face video corpus featuring 6 different stylized characters talking with 7 different emotions. Together with the dataset, we also release an emotional talking avatar generation method which enables the manipulation of emotion. We validated the effectiveness of our dataset and our method in generating audio based puppetry examples, including comparisons to state-of-the-art techniques and a user study. Finally, various applications of this method are discussed in the context of animating avatars in VR
What Makes a Good Conversation? Clark, Leigh; Pantidi, Nadia; Cooney, Orla ...
Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems,
05/2019
Conference Proceeding
Odprti dostop
Conversational agents promise conversational interaction but fail to deliver. Efforts often emulate functional rules from human speech, without considering key characteristics that conversation must ...encapsulate. Given its potential in supporting long-term human-agent relationships, it is paramount that HCI focuses efforts on delivering this promise. We aim to understand what people value in conversation and how this should manifest in agents. Findings from a series of semi-structured interviews show people make a clear dichotomy between social and functional roles of conversation, emphasising the long-term dynamics of bond and trust along with the importance of context and relationship stage in the types of conversations they have. People fundamentally questioned the need for bond and common ground in agent communication, shifting to more utilitarian definitions of conversational qualities. Drawing on these findings we discuss key challenges for conversational agent design, most notably the need to redefine the design parameters for conversational agent interaction.
Understanding the meaning of existing SQL queries is critical for code maintenance and reuse. Yet SQL can be hard to read, even for expert users or the original creator of a query. We conjecture that ...it is possible to capture the logical intent of queries in automatically-generated visual diagrams that can help users understand the meaning of queries faster and more accurately than SQL text alone. We present initial steps in that direction with visual diagrams that are based on the first-order logic foundation of SQL and can capture the meaning of deeply nested queries. Our diagrams build upon a rich history of diagrammatic reasoning systems in logic and were designed using a large body of human-computer interaction best practices: they are minimal in that no visual element is superfluous; they are unambiguous in that no two queries with different semantics map to the same visualization; and they extend previously existing visual representations of relational schemata and conjunctive queries in a natural way. An experimental evaluation involving 42 users on Amazon Mechanical Turk shows that with only a 2--3 minute static tutorial, participants could interpret queries meaningfully faster with our diagrams than when reading SQL alone. Moreover, we have evidence that our visual diagrams result in participants making fewer errors than with SQL. We believe that more regular exposure to diagrammatic representations of SQL can give rise to a pattern-based and thus more intuitive use and re-use of SQL. A full version of this paper with all appendices and supplemental material for the experimental study (stimuli, raw data, and analysis code) are available at https://osf.io/btszh.
Reevaluating passive haptic learning of morse code Pescara, Erik; Polly, Tobias; Schankin, Andrea ...
Proceedings of the 23rd International Symposium on Wearable Computers,
09/2019
Conference Proceeding
Passive Haptic Learning (PHL) describes the learning of a motion, sequence or pattern without voluntary involvement of attention, focus or motivation through a haptic interface. In previous PHL ...studies about teaching Morse code, we suspect that active learning processes were at least partially involved in causing extraordinarily high learning rates. Therefore we conduct a similar, 50-participant user study to investigate whether PHL is able to teach Morse code without active attention. Our study design differs from previous studies by preventing active learning explicitly (no feedback given) and implicitly (non-Morse patterns, tests prevent learning by rule of elimination) for three groups. Two other groups get the same feedback as was present in other studies. Our results show much lower learning rates when there is no active learning possible. Including active learning, we replicate the same learning results as have been reported. This suggests that our suspicion was correct and that PHL of Morse Code is possible, but greatly limited. Further studies about PHL must pay attention to whether their study design allows participants to learn actively - even small amounts of information that is actively learned may have a great impact on learning performance.
Misinformation is one of the key challenges facing society today. User-centered misinformation interventions as digital countermeasures that exert a direct influence on users represent a promising ...means to deal with the large amounts of information available. While an extensive body of research on this topic exists, researchers are confronted with a diverse research landscape spanning multiple disciplines. This review systematizes the landscape of user-centered misinformation interventions to facilitate knowledge transfer, identify trends, and enable informed decision-making. Over 6,000 scholarly publications were screened, and a systematic literature review ( N=172 ) was conducted. A taxonomy was derived regarding intervention design (e.g., labels, showing indicators of misinformation, corrections, removal, or visibility reduction of content), user interaction (active or passive), and timing (e.g., pre or post exposure to misinformation or on request of the user). We provide a structured overview of approaches across multiple disciplines and derive six overarching challenges for future research regarding transferability of approaches to (1) novel platforms and (2) emerging video- and image-based misinformation, the sensible combination of automated mechanisms with (3) human experts and (4) user-centered feedback to facilitate comprehensibility, (5) encouraging media literacy without misinformation exposure, and (6) adequately addressing particularly vulnerable users such as older people or adolescents.
earrings.ai is an AI design app platform that lets you create your dream earrings simply from describing it – and AR try them on Chang 2018 and even participate in a virtual and real world ...marketplace Chang 2016 to have artisan creators make them, or a network of 3D printers fab them!
Cultural taboos and limiting social norms make it challenging to communicate and teach about menstrual health in India. We present findings from an inquiry of current approaches used to educate ...adolescents about menstruation, examining the perspectives of young adults, parents, teachers, social workers, and health professionals for identifying design opportunities and potential for impact. Our findings from the content analysis of education and training materials in use, an online survey of 391 adults, 52 interviews, and 2 focus groups indicate that although detailed and descriptive information materials are available for use, there exists a disconnect between parents’ and teachers’ expectations regarding who will introduce these topics to adolescents. We also highlight a clear difference in attitudes regarding who must be taught, how, where, and at what stages. Finally, we articulate factors that shape access and receptivity to this knowledge and engage with the lens of feminist HCI to discuss sociotechnical implications for the design of menstrual health education initiatives.
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