Conceitos e métodos para apoio ao desenvolvimento e avaliação de colaboração remota utilizando realidade aumentada

Remote Collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR) shows great potential to establish a common ground in physically distributed scenarios where team-members need to achieve a shared goal. However, most research efforts in this field have been devoted to experiment with the enabling technology and propose methods to support its development. As the field evolves, evaluation and characterization of the collaborative process become an essential, but difficult endeavor, to better understand the contributions of AR. In this thesis, we conducted a critical analysis to identify the main limitations and opportunities of the field, while situating its maturity and proposing a roadmap of important research actions. Next, a human-centered design methodology was adopted, involving industrial partners to probe how AR could support their needs during remote maintenance. These outcomes were combined with literature methods into an AR-prototype and its evaluation was performed through a user study. From this, it became clear the necessity to perform a deep reflection in order to better understand the dimensions that influence and must/should be considered in Collaborative AR. Hence, a conceptual model and a humancentered taxonomy were proposed to foster systematization of perspectives. Based on the model proposed, an evaluation framework for contextualized data gathering and analysis was developed, allowing support the design and performance of distributed evaluations in a more informed and complete manner. To instantiate this vision, the CAPTURE toolkit was created, providing an additional perspective based on selected dimensions of collaboration and pre-defined measurements to obtain “in situ” data about them, which can be analyzed using an integrated visualization dashboard. The toolkit successfully supported evaluations of several team-members during tasks of remote maintenance mediated by AR. Thus, showing its versatility and potential in eliciting a comprehensive characterization of the added value of AR in real-life situations, establishing itself as a generalpurpose solution, potentially applicable to a wider range of collaborative scenarios.Colaboração Remota utilizando Realidade Aumentada (RA) apresenta um enorme potencial para estabelecer um entendimento comum em cenários onde membros de uma equipa fisicamente distribuídos precisam de atingir um objetivo comum. No entanto, a maioria dos esforços de investigação tem-se focado nos aspetos tecnológicos, em fazer experiências e propor métodos para apoiar seu desenvolvimento. À medida que a área evolui, a avaliação e caracterização do processo colaborativo tornam-se um esforço essencial, mas difícil, para compreender as contribuições da RA. Nesta dissertação, realizámos uma análise crítica para identificar as principais limitações e oportunidades da área, ao mesmo tempo em que situámos a sua maturidade e propomos um mapa com direções de investigação importantes. De seguida, foi adotada uma metodologia de Design Centrado no Humano, envolvendo parceiros industriais de forma a compreender como a RA poderia responder às suas necessidades em manutenção remota. Estes resultados foram combinados com métodos da literatura num protótipo de RA e a sua avaliação foi realizada com um caso de estudo. Ficou então clara a necessidade de realizar uma reflexão profunda para melhor compreender as dimensões que influenciam e devem ser consideradas na RA Colaborativa. Foram então propostos um modelo conceptual e uma taxonomia centrada no ser humano para promover a sistematização de perspetivas. Com base no modelo proposto, foi desenvolvido um framework de avaliação para recolha e análise de dados contextualizados, permitindo apoiar o desenho e a realização de avaliações distribuídas de forma mais informada e completa. Para instanciar esta visão, o CAPTURE toolkit foi criado, fornecendo uma perspetiva adicional com base em dimensões de colaboração e medidas predefinidas para obter dados in situ, que podem ser analisados utilizando o painel de visualização integrado. O toolkit permitiu avaliar com sucesso vários colaboradores durante a realização de tarefas de manutenção remota apoiada por RA, permitindo mostrar a sua versatilidade e potencial em obter uma caracterização abrangente do valor acrescentado da RA em situações da vida real. Sendo assim, estabelece-se como uma solução genérica, potencialmente aplicável a uma gama diversificada de cenários colaborativos.Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Informátic

Forming Digital Workspace: Current State and Applications of Extended Reality in Virtual Teams

Extended reality (XR) has been widely applied as an umbrella term encompassing virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality. Despite extensive research on XR applications in various contexts, little attention has been drawn to its utilization in work scenarios, particularly in virtual teams. This study is a systematic literature review of virtual teams utilizing XR in the digital workspace, incorporating related articles from four scientific databases over the past decade. The review focuses on two aspects: the current state of XR implementation in virtual teams and how technology addresses the digital collaborative process. Findings highlight team types, application areas, collaboration modes, and key actions associated with XR usage. A theoretical gap is revealed, as previous studies focus on either the technological aspects of XR or its outcomes. Additionally, this study proposes a model to illustrate how XR technologies empower virtual teams, providing valuable insight for organizations regarding its potential usage

MAGIC: Manipulating Avatars and Gestures to Improve Remote Collaboration

Remote collaborative work has become pervasive in many settings, from engineering to medical professions. Users are immersed in virtual environments and communicate through life-sized avatars that enable face-to-face collaboration. Within this context, users often collaboratively view and interact with virtual 3D models, for example, to assist in designing new devices such as customized prosthetics, vehicles, or buildings. However, discussing shared 3D content face-to-face has various challenges, such as ambiguities, occlusions, and different viewpoints that all decrease mutual awareness, leading to decreased task performance and increased errors. To address this challenge, we introduce MAGIC, a novel approach for understanding pointing gestures in a face-to-face shared 3D space, improving mutual understanding and awareness. Our approach distorts the remote user\'s gestures to correctly reflect them in the local user\'s reference space when face-to-face. We introduce a novel metric called pointing agreement to measure what two users perceive in common when using pointing gestures in a shared 3D space. Results from a user study suggest that MAGIC significantly improves pointing agreement in face-to-face collaboration settings, improving co-presence and awareness of interactions performed in the shared space. We believe that MAGIC improves remote collaboration by enabling simpler communication mechanisms and better mutual awareness.Comment: Presented at IEEE VR 202

Social navigation

In this chapter we present one of the pioneer approaches in supporting users in navigating the complex information spaces, social navigation support. Social navigation support is inspired by natural tendencies of individuals to follow traces of each other in exploring the world, especially when dealing with uncertainties. In this chapter, we cover details on various approaches in implementing social navigation support in the information space as we also connect the concept to supporting theories. The first part of this chapter reviews related theories and introduces the design space of social navigation support through a series of example applications. The second part of the chapter discusses the common challenges in design and implementation of social navigation support, demonstrates how these challenges have been addressed, and reviews more recent direction of social navigation support. Furthermore, as social navigation support has been an inspirational approach to various other social information access approaches we discuss how social navigation support can be integrated with those approaches. We conclude with a review of evaluation methods for social navigation support and remarks about its current state

Instructional Message Design: Theory, Research, and Practice (Volume 2)

Message design is all around us, from the presentations we see in meetings and classes, to the instructions that come with our latest tech gadgets, to multi-million-dollar training simulations. In short, instructional message design is the real-world application of instructional and learning theories to design the tools and technologies used to communicate and effectively convey information. This field of study pulls from many applied sciences including cognitive psychology, industrial design, graphic design, instructional design, information technology, and human performance technology to name just a few. In this book we visit several foundational theories that guide our research, look at different real-world applications, and begin to discuss directions for future best practice. For instance, cognitive load and multimedia learning theories provide best practice, virtual reality and simulations are only a few of the multitude of applications. Special needs learners and designing for online, e-learning, and web conferencing are only some of many applied areas where effective message design can improve outcomes. Studying effective instructional message design tools and techniques has and will continue to be a critical aspect of the overall instructional design process. Hopefully, this book will serve as an introduction to these topics and inspire your curiosity to explore further!https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/distancelearning_books/1003/thumbnail.jp

Instructional Message Design: Theory, Research, and Practice (Volume 2)

Message design is all around us, from the presentations we see in meetings and classes, to the instructions that come with our latest tech gadgets, to multi-million-dollar training simulations. In short, instructional message design is the real-world application of instructional and learning theories to design the tools and technologies used to communicate and effectively convey information. This field of study pulls from many applied sciences including cognitive psychology, industrial design, graphic design, instructional design, information technology, and human performance technology to name just a few. In this book we will visit several foundational theories that guide our research, look at different real-world applications, and begin to discuss directions for future best practice. For instance, cognitive load and multimedia learning theories provide best practice, virtual reality and simulations are only a few of the multitude of applications. Special needs learners and designing for online, e-learning, and web conferencing are only some of many applied areas where effective message design can improve outcomes. Studying effective instructional message design tools and techniques has and will continue to be a critical aspect of the overall instructional design process. Hopefully, this book will serve as an introduction to these topics and inspire your curiosity to explore further