Creating a 4D photoreal VR environment to teach civil engineering

Motivated by recent developments in AR/VR technology and accessibility, an interdisciplinary team at a Sinoforeign Higher Education Institution in China have been engaged in the creation of a virtual reality learning resource that will be offered to students and educators in the institution’s Civil Engineering department. In Civil Engineering education, it is difficult to explain to students how classroom theories translate into real life solutions and field trips can help resolve this problem. However, these must overcome fundamental concerns associated with student site visits, which include safety, logistics and accessibility for disadvantaged students. The presented case study details the development of a virtual field trip that is accessible from simple phone-based virtual reality headsets. The photoreal virtual field trip was constructed through multiple site visits to capture data and the experience now provides students with an opportunity to view the entire construction process of a university library. This paper contributes to current research by exploring the challenges and conjugate solutions encountered whilst building the virtual reality environment, and by presenting the first known photoreal virtual field trip that allows students to autonomously move both spatially and chronologically around a construction site. This will benefit other educational practitioners who are contemplating similar initiatives

Through the Wardrobe: Exploring the potential of headset augmented reality to provide a Thirdspace immersive media experience

This research investigates the potential in employing headset augmented reality (AR) for interactive documentary when the contributors are collaboratively involved in the production process. This research has grown out of the intersection of interactive documentary (incorporating methods from documentary production more broadly), immersive media studies, gender studies and social and visual anthropology.The research explores how headset AR invites a complex interaction amongst the immersant, the physical objects of a place, the physical affordances of the device and the virtual content that is activated. Headset AR affords a porous ‘diegetic bubble’ that integrates multisensory stimuli with physical and virtual elements in a storyworld. Presenting marginalised voices in a headset AR documentary can facilitate a Thirdspace, a hybrid space where physical materiality and virtual media come together simultaneously offering potentially radical and transformative ways of understanding and experiencing the world.To investigate the use of AR headsets for interactive documentary, I conducted research through dialogically engaging with both practice and theory. The research has been practice-based through the process of developing, iterating and exhibiting a headset AR documentary installation, Through the Wardrobe. The production process involved the collaboration of four nonbinary/genderqueer contributors. In addition to contributing their stories, they participated in the processes of interaction design, installation and exhibition of the work. Feedback from immersants also dynamically shaped the iterative process of exhibiting the installation.Both this written thesis and the resulting practice output, the headset AR installation Through the Wardrobe, demonstrate the rigour in my practice-based research

Creating immersive, play-anywhere handheld augmented reality stories, through remote user testing

This thesis outlines new instances of Extended Reality (XR) stories as well as associated user studies with them, to create more immersive story experiences delivered at a user’s choice of location through a mobile phone. This extends prior work on Location Based Experiences (LBEs), which have typically been designed to offer a game or story at a pre-determined location. A play-anywhere experience offers potential to open up LBEs to a wider audience, as well as to those may prefer to take part individually or closer to home, such attitude shifts becoming increasingly more common. The current research adopted an in the wild approach combining practice, studies and theory, with most user data being collected remotely. Each story application developed is subsequently referred to as an app, with each app offering a bespoke story incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) features, to better bring users’ location inline with the narrative. Testing the apps across various locations matched their intended use, and resulted in new guidelines for both incorporating AR into such LBEs, as well as for conducting remote user studies. A final app offered a site-specific curated story, with all study participants taking part under similar conditions at the same location, the ability to observe them using the app providing additional insights. The story apps used available local map data alongside Handheld Augmented Reality (HAR), to overlay interactable virtual objects on top of the physical environment, and visible on the phone’s display. Guidelines from related methodologies were used to better allow for the variety of factors that might influence different users’ immersion and engagement. These included the implementation of the AR features, the story itself, real world activity, and personal preferences including onboarding requirements. The approach taken contributed a reverse methodology to a lot of related research, that would typically begin with laboratory testing before moving to public spaces. User studies with the five mobile apps contributed guidelines for such experiences, that could benefit both practitioners and researchers in related fields. In the later case, a need was identified to develop new research tools specifically suited to the subtleties of handheld play-anywhere LBEs, such issues explored within the apps tested. The guidelines identified for offering more effective XR LBEs were also implemented in the creation of a new open source Unity project, called Map Story Engine. This offers a tool to test new features, as well as providing a fully customisable template for practitioners to author their own play-anywhere HAR stories and games

Wearables at work:preferences from an employee’s perspective

This exploratory study aims to obtain a first impression of the wishes and needs of employees on the use of wearables at work for health promotion. 76 employ-ees with a mean age of 40 years old (SD ±11.7) filled in a survey after trying out a wearable. Most employees see the potential of using wearable devices for workplace health promotion. However, according to employees, some negative aspects should be overcome before wearables can effectively contribute to health promotion. The most mentioned negative aspects were poor visualization and un-pleasantness of wearing. Specifically for the workplace, employees were con-cerned about the privacy of data collection