Virtual Meeting Rooms: From Observation to Simulation

Virtual meeting rooms are used for simulation of real meeting behavior and can show how people behave, how they gesture, move their heads, bodies, their gaze behavior during conversations. They are used for visualising models of meeting behavior, and they can be used for the evaluation of these models. They are also used to show the effects of controlling certain parameters on the behavior and in experiments to see what the effect is on communication when various channels of information - speech, gaze, gesture, posture - are switched off or manipulated in other ways. The paper presents the various stages in the development of a virtual meeting room as well and illustrates its uses by presenting some results of experiments to see whether human judges can induce conversational roles in a virtual meeting situation when they only see the head movements of participants in the meeting

INSPIRAL: investigating portals for information resources and learning. Final project report

INSPIRAL's aims were to identify and analyse, from the perspective of the UK HE learner, the nontechnical, institutional and end-user issues with regard to linking VLEs and digital libraries, and to make recommendations for JISC strategic planning and investment. INSPIRAL's objectives -To identify key stakeholders with regard to the linkage of VLEs, MLEs and digital libraries -To identify key stakeholder forum points and dissemination routes -To identify the relevant issues, according to the stakeholders and to previous research, pertaining to the interaction (both possible and potential) between VLEs/MLEs and digital libraries -To critically analyse identified issues, based on stakeholder experience and practice; output of previous and current projects; and prior and current research -To report back to JISC and to the stakeholder communities, with results situated firmly within the context of JISC's strategic aims and objectives

Three levels of metric for evaluating wayfinding

Three levels of virtual environment (VE) metric are proposed, based on: (1) users’ task performance (time taken, distance traveled and number of errors made), (2) physical behavior (locomotion, looking around, and time and error classification), and (3) decision making (i.e., cognitive) rationale (think aloud, interview and questionnaire). Examples of the use of these metrics are drawn from a detailed review of research into VE wayfinding. A case study from research into the fidelity that is required for efficient VE wayfinding is presented, showing the unsuitability in some circumstances of common metrics of task performance such as time and distance, and the benefits to be gained by making fine-grained analyses of users’ behavior. Taken as a whole, the article highlights the range of techniques that have been successfully used to evaluate wayfinding and explains in detail how some of these techniques may be applied

Are tiled display walls needed for astronomy?

Clustering commodity displays into a Tiled Display Wall (TDW) provides a cost-effective way to create an extremely high resolution display, capable of approaching the image sizes now gen- erated by modern astronomical instruments. Astronomers face the challenge of inspecting single large images, many similar images simultaneously, and heterogeneous but related content. Many research institutions have constructed TDWs on the basis that they will improve the scientific outcomes of astronomical imagery. We test this concept by presenting sample images to astronomers and non- astronomers using a standard desktop display (SDD) and a TDW. These samples include standard English words, wide field galaxy surveys and nebulae mosaics from the Hubble telescope. These experiments show that TDWs provide a better environment for searching for small targets in large images than SDDs. It also shows that astronomers tend to be better at searching images for targets than non-astronomers, both groups are generally better when employing physical navigation as opposed to virtual navigation, and that the combination of two non-astronomers using a TDW rivals the experience of a single astronomer. However, there is also a large distribution in aptitude amongst the participants and the nature of the content also plays a significant role is success.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures, accepted for publication in PASA (Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia