Virtual reality utility and usefulness in the furniture, fixture and equipment sector: a validation of interactive and distributed immersion

PURPOSE: The Furniture, Fixture and Equipment (FFE) sector is well placed to leverage virtual reality (VR) technology for competitive and operational advantages; however, the diffusion of VR applications in this sector has followed a steep curve. This study reports on the implementation of two novel VR applications in the FFE sector and also investigates the challenges and benefits associated with their use and adaptability. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A sequential exploratory mixed research methodology consisting of three phases was adopted for this study. This included identification of factors that affect/facilitate the implementation of VR (Challenges and Benefits) using experiments during in-house prototyping of VR applications, a rigorous literature review and questionnaire survey to solicit FFE Stakeholder's (n = 117) opinion on the utility and usefulness of the proposed applications and to the understand factors that facilitate and inhibit their implementation in FFE's context, particularly as a design communication and coordination tool. FINDINGS: The findings of this study revealed that distributed and single-user VR has become essential to digitalising the FFE sector's design communication with improved design communication being regarded as the most important benefit of its use. Conversely, the most critical challenge that inhibits the implementation of these two VR applications in the FFE sector is the perceived cost. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This study provides valuable insight to FFE's stakeholders to devise action plans to mitigate myriad complex and interrelated factors that affect the adoption of virtual reality technology in the FFE sector that are otherwise very hard to understand, and the consequential implementation of any mitigation plans cannot be devised

Experiencing AR in retail: The influence of moment marketing and avatars on consumer behaviour

The development of augmented reality experiences is growing, as its adoption from companies and consumers registers a steady rise. As research is still catching up with the fast adoption of augmented reality solutions, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of using a shopping assistant, through augmented reality technology, on the consumers’ emotional and cognitive responses, and how it would affect their buying behaviours. A prototype of an application to assist consumers inside a supermarket store was developed, applying a moment marketing strategy, and using HoloLens glasses. By studying the reactions to a number of product suggestions, it was found that whilst the level of brand-moment fit is not yet a big influencer on consumers’ responses and behaviours, the presence of the avatar as the assistant impacts their decisions and heightens their cognitive responses. The results show that a media rich augmented reality experience influences how customers behave in a retail store, and how they make their purchase decisions, ultimately changing how consumers relate to the brands involved in such experiences. At a time when managers in every industry work to capture the attention of consumers, the present study shows how relevant content remains important in every communication activity, even in an innovative augmented reality retail shopping experience.O desenvolvimento de experiências de realidade aumentada tem vindo a crescer, ao mesmo tempo que empresas e consumidores têm vindo a adotar esta tecnologia. Enquanto os investigadores estão ainda a tentar acompanhar a rápida adoção de soluções que envolvem tecnologia de realidade aumentada, o objetivo deste estudo foi investigar que efeitos se poderiam verificar nas respostas emocionais e cognitivas dos consumidores, tal como nos seus comportamentos de compra, ao usar um assistente de compras, através de tecnologia de realidade aumentada. Recorrendo aos óculos HoloLens, foi desenvolvido um protótipo de uma aplicação que assiste os consumidores dentro de um supermercado, aplicando também uma estratégia de marketing em tempo-real. Ao estudar as reações às sugestões de vários produtos, concluiu-se que, enquanto uma alteração nos níveis de brand-moment fit não têm ainda influência nas respostas emocionais e cognitivas dos consumidores, a presença de um avatar como assistente tem um impacto nas decisões de compra, tal como estimula as respostas cognitivas das pessoas. Numa altura em que gestores de qualquer indústria trabalham para captar a atenção dos consumidores, o presente estudo mostra como o conteúdo permanece uma parte importante de qualquer forma de comunicação de marketing, mesmo numa experiência inovadora de realidade aumentada

Multimodal E-Commerce: A Usability and Social Presence Investigation

This thesis investigates empirically multimodal socially interactive e-commerce interfaces. The overall hypothesis is that multimodal social interaction will improve the usability of e-commerce interfaces and increase the user‘s feeling of social presence, decision making and product understanding when compared to an equivalent non-multimodal socially interactive interface. The investigation consisted eight conditions in three experimental phases. The first experimental phase investigated non-socially interactive, static-socially interactive, and interactive-socially interactive interfaces (three conditions) using an e-commerce platform with a dependent sample of users (n=36). The second experimental phase continued with the comparative evaluation of a further two conditions based on the results of the first phase. An audio and an avatar-based socially interactive conditions were evaluated with two independent groups of users (n=18 for each group). The third experimental phase investigated three socially interactive conditions. These were text with graphics, auditory stimuli, and avatars. The results demonstrate that socially interactive metaphors in e-commerce interfaces improved the ability of users to use presented information effectively, make decisions in comparison to non-social or static social interactive interfaces. An avatar-based socially interactive e-commerce interface improved the user‘s social presence. A set of empirically derived guidelines for the design and use of these metaphors to communicate information in a socially interactive atmosphere is also introduced and discussed

A video game enabled collaborative virtual shopping environment.

"The technology used to create social presence through computer-mediated communication in multi-player video games can also be used to synthesise a "traditional" virtual shopping environment by introducing social communication, complete user-control, and product interaction. Such an environment would serve to re-empower the user and instil the confidence necessary for shoppers to carry out their online transactions. This thesis investigates such matters, with the aim of showing that multiplayer video games may well be the drivers for a radically new approach to e-commerce, which has the potential to evolve independently of the World Wide Web. The benefits to web based e-commerce are numerous and widely acknowledged. Unfortunately, the process of making commerce electronic simultaneously created several drawbacks that inevitably resulted from stepping out of the physical world and into a digital alternative. These have included a loss of consumer control over independent movement, severely reduced product interaction, and potential social isolation. A video game enabled collaborative virtual shopping environment (VGECVSE) could, however, offer a fresh approach that is needed to counter these limitations. If successfully implemented a VGECVSE has the potential to make participants believe they are sharing space with others who are, in reality, all at different physical sites (social telepresence). It could also introduce a more "open road" 3D environment where users are in complete control of their actions. Finally, it could enable consumers to share the same virtual space as the product, thereby enabling numerous interaction possibilities between product and consumer. This thesis discusses how the games industry has already taken significant steps towards the creation of a VGECVSE, most noticeably the convergence of the games industry with telecommunications, e-commerce and various digital entertainment products (see Chapter 4, Section 4.4). It is the opinion of this thesis that these steps together with the drive of consumer demand, financial incentives, competition and the desire to express oneself will ultimately lead to an all encompassing VGECVSE. Such an environment will act as a gateway between the worlds of bytes and atoms connecting users to an unprecedented world of digital entertainment, social communication and e-commerce. A virtual space that can expand, develop and evolve well beyond the conventional limitations that restrict the physical world.

Keeping Up with the Virtual Joneses: The Practices, Meanings, and Consequences of Consumption in Second Life

Every day, thousands of people log into the virtual world of Second Life and collectively pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to purchase virtual goods. With an in-world economic system that is linked to offline economies and a wealth of user-generated content, the virtual world has a wide variety of goods available for consumption. These commodities, which include everything from clothes and cars to fantastical pets and flying airships, are computer code visually rendered on a screen, and cannot exist apart from the servers on which they are housed. Although they are virtual, goods in Second Life are widely bought, sold, and traded. Through participant observation, surveys, interviews, and content analysis, this dissertation investigates the practices, meanings, and effects associated with the consumption of virtual goods. It considers the extensive consumption practices found in the world’s market and freebie economies, the degree to which Second Life residents consume virtual goods, and their consumption preferences. It also investigates the meanings associated with these practices, and examines the ways in which consumption is implicated in individuality, belonging, resistance, social status, and social and cultural capital. Finally, it argues that although there is significant consumption inequality within the world, the effects and perceptions of this inequality are moderated by factors including the virtual nature of the world, free and inexpensive virtual goods, a lack of stigmas, user-generated content, and resident attitudes. Although consumption is a practice that bears important meanings for residents and is heavily engaged, often in unequal ways, the moderating effects of the world make Second Life what can be termed a utopia of inequality

Examination of interactive experience: Construction of physical and social presence in virtual environments

Interactivity seems to be a familiar concept, which partially explains its frequent use in discussions about new communication technologies and what they can bring to communication studies. However, interactivity research has yet to reach a comprehensive and concrete consensus concerning the antecedents and consequences of interactive experiences. The main objective of this research is to determine the factors responsible for fostering the interactivity experience in the multiuser virtual environments and to observe how this variance in interactivity will affect the formation of physical and social presence. The study also examines the possible relationship between physical and social presence via correlation analysis and uses a one-way ANOVA with Post-Hoc Tests to designate the effects of interactivity on physical and social presence

Enhancing our lives with immersive virtual reality

Virtual reality (VR) started about 50 years ago in a form we would recognize today [stereo head-mounted display (HMD), head tracking, computer graphics generated images] – although the hardware was completely different. In the 1980s and 1990s, VR emerged again based on a different generation of hardware (e.g., CRT displays rather than vector refresh, electromagnetic tracking instead of mechanical). This reached the attention of the public, and VR was hailed by many engineers, scientists, celebrities, and business people as the beginning of a new era, when VR would soon change the world for the better. Then, VR disappeared from public view and was rumored to be “dead.” In the intervening 25 years a huge amount of research has nevertheless been carried out across a vast range of applications – from medicine to business, from psychotherapy to industry, from sports to travel. Scientists, engineers, and people working in industry carried on with their research and applications using and exploring different forms of VR, not knowing that actually the topic had already passed away. The purpose of this article is to survey a range of VR applications where there is some evidence for, or at least debate about, its utility, mainly based on publications in peer-reviewed journals. Of course not every type of application has been covered, nor every scientific paper (about 186,000 papers in Google Scholar): in particular, in this review we have not covered applications in psychological or medical rehabilitation. The objective is that the reader becomes aware of what has been accomplished in VR, where the evidence is weaker or stronger, and what can be done. We start in Section 1 with an outline of what VR is and the major conceptual framework used to understand what happens when people experience it – the concept of “presence.” In Section 2, we review some areas where VR has been used in science – mostly psychology and neuroscience, the area of scientific visualization, and some remarks about its use in education and surgical training. In Section 3, we discuss how VR has been used in sports and exercise. In Section 4, we survey applications in social psychology and related areas – how VR has been used to throw light on some social phenomena, and how it can be used to tackle experimentally areas that cannot be studied experimentally in real life. We conclude with how it has been used in the preservation of and access to cultural heritage. In Section 5, we present the domain of moral behavior, including an example of how it might be used to train professionals such as medical doctors when confronting serious dilemmas with patients. In Section 6, we consider how VR has been and might be used in various aspects of travel, collaboration, and industry. In Section 7, we consider mainly the use of VR in news presentation and also discuss different types of VR. In the concluding Section 8, we briefly consider new ideas that have recently emerged – an impossible task since during the short time we have written this page even newer ideas have emerged! And, we conclude with some general considerations and speculations. Throughout and wherever possible we have stressed novel applications and approaches and how the real power of VR is not necessarily to produce a faithful reproduction of “reality” but rather that it offers the possibility to step outside of the normal bounds of reality and realize goals in a totally new and unexpected way. We hope that our article will provoke readers to think as paradigm changers, and advance VR to realize different worlds that might have a positive impact on the lives of millions of people worldwide, and maybe even help a little in saving the planet

Value in play: Games Items in Digital Environments

Game items have become valuable objects that can be traded by both players and game companies. However, valuable game items are typically misunderstood by the public as something unreal or unserious that should not be treated as something valuable. In this thesis, I examine how game items play a significant role as valuable objects in the culturally situated contexts of gameplay and beyond. In current mainstream discourses, the reasons why game items are so valuable to players can be understood from two main perspectives derived from two traditional approaches: the labour theory of value and the subjective theory of value. On the one hand, followers of the labour theory of value argue that the value of game items is manifest when players make efforts to obtain them. On the other hand, advocators of the subjective theory of value suggest that this value is given by players’ subjective personal preferences. Although these two perspectives provide useful insights for understanding the value of game items, neither on its own is enough to provide sophisticated explanations for how the value of game items is created and used in different contexts of gameplay that involve much more complexity. This thesis argues that the value of game items is a result of the interplays between different factors involved with both the production and consumption processes in digital gaming. Drawing on theoretical concepts from different disciplines including media studies, economics, game design, performance studies, and sociology, this thesis argues that the value of game items should also be understood in three alternative contexts: game design; players’ in-game social performance; and player groups. The role of game items as valuable objects therefore does not only originate from players’ efforts and personal preferences, but is also created and affected by game mechanics and the strategies of game companies, the way players perform their online identities, and the influence of player groups in digital environments. This thesis suggests that a multi-perspective and an interdisciplinary approach are appropriate and necessary to provide a more comprehensive picture of how game items have become significantly valuable

Actor & Avatar: A Scientific and Artistic Catalog

What kind of relationship do we have with artificial beings (avatars, puppets, robots, etc.)? What does it mean to mirror ourselves in them, to perform them or to play trial identity games with them? Actor & Avatar addresses these questions from artistic and scholarly angles. Contributions on the making of "technical others" and philosophical reflections on artificial alterity are flanked by neuroscientific studies on different ways of perceiving living persons and artificial counterparts. The contributors have achieved a successful artistic-scientific collaboration with extensive visual material