Exploring Attitudes Towards Increasing User Awareness of Reality From Within Virtual Reality

The occlusive nature of VR headsets introduces significant barriers to a user’s awareness of their surrounding reality. While recent research has explored systems to facilitate a VR user’s interactions with nearby people, objects, etc, we lack a fundamental understanding of user attitudes towards and expectations of these systems. We present the results of a card sorting study (N=14) which investigated attitudes towards increasing a VR user’s reality awareness (awareness of people, objects, audio, pets, and systems to manage and moderate personal usage) whilst in VR. Our results confirm VR headsets should be equipped with systems to increase a user’s awareness of reality. However, opinions vary on how increased awareness should be achieved as our results also highlight differing expectations regarding: persistent vs temporary notification design, notification content and when, why and how awareness should be increased

Privacy-enhancing technology and everyday augmented reality : understanding bystanders' varying needs for awareness and consent

Fundamental to Augmented Reality (AR) headsets is their capacity to visually and aurally sense the world around them, necessary to drive the positional tracking that makes rendering 3D spatial content possible. This requisite sensing also opens the door for more advanced AR-driven activities, such as augmented perception, volumetric capture and biometric identification - activities with the potential to expose bystanders to significant privacy risks. Existing Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) often safeguard against these risks at a low level e.g., instituting camera access controls. However, we argue that such PETs are incompatible with the need for always-on sensing given AR headsets' intended everyday use. Through an online survey (N=102), we examine bystanders' awareness of, and concerns regarding, potentially privacy infringing AR activities; the extent to which bystanders' consent should be sought; and the level of granularity of information necessary to provide awareness of AR activities to bystanders. Our findings suggest that PETs should take into account the AR activity type, and relationship to bystanders, selectively facilitating awareness and consent. In this way, we can ensure bystanders feel their privacy is respected by everyday AR headsets, and avoid unnecessary rejection of these powerful devices by society

Media interventions in public space: A place-based approach for the assessment of human experience in digitally augmented urban environments

Considering the amount of time people spend occupying public spaces during their lives in the city, the quality of the urban environment is crucial as it is found to have significant effects on their behaviour, performance, social development as well as their wellbeing (Adams, 2014; Thwaites et al., 2017; Anderson et al., 2017). The last decade, urban public spaces have changed considerably through the gradual integration of digital technology into them. Furthermore, urban architecture and public art have manifested possibilities they never had before. The result is that contemporary public spaces are now highly digitized. This combination of physical and digital elements in space, also known as media architecture and urban media art, is frequently thought as a tool to stimulate and amplify casual urban experiences. While most research studies on urban situated digital technologies focus either on their functional- technical dimension or on their social effects, little is known on the overall impact of these media stimuli on the versatile aspects of human experience. In this context, the study by adopting a place-based approach, aims to interpret how the multiple interrelated elements of human experience can be affected by the implementation of digital installations and, ultimately, explore the potential of digital augmented public spaces to act as mediators for more responsive and citizen-centred urban environments. The theoretical framework of the study is based on fundamental Place theories which have been assessed and synthesized in order to develop a new comprehensive basis for the concept of place experience. The research project employed a pragmatic methodology to human- environment interaction which links the academic fields of urban and landscape design, phenomenology, psychology, environmental psychology and neuroscience using an embedded case study approach. It triangulated several techniques which include field observations, on-site discussions, semi-structured and in-depth phenomenological interviews, a field-based psychophysiological experiment as well as digital ethnography. The research found critical transformations in place experience during the digital augmentation of the four examined public spaces which involved changes in space’s activity, vibrancy, social interaction and level of contact with strangers, inclusion, human proxemics as well as emergence of playful behaviour, phenomena of place personalization and creative bodily expression. The main contribution of the study is threefold; a. it provides theoretical input through the examination of the affordances of urban media interventions in place experience and of their value as placemaking tools; b. it delivers methodological input through the development of a multidisciplinary pragmatic framework for the assessment and evaluation of complex phenomena associated with human experience in public space; c. it offers empirical input through the suggestion of a number of design and planning considerations for the development of active, pleasant and human-friendly urban media environments

Media interventions in public space: A place-based approach for the assessment of human experience in digitally augmented urban environments

Considering the amount of time people spend occupying public spaces during their lives in the city, the quality of the urban environment is crucial as it is found to have significant effects on their behaviour, performance, social development as well as their wellbeing (Adams, 2014; Thwaites et al., 2017; Anderson et al., 2017). The last decade, urban public spaces have changed considerably through the gradual integration of digital technology into them. Furthermore, urban architecture and public art have manifested possibilities they never had before. The result is that contemporary public spaces are now highly digitized. This combination of physical and digital elements in space, also known as media architecture and urban media art, is frequently thought as a tool to stimulate and amplify casual urban experiences. While most research studies on urban situated digital technologies focus either on their functional- technical dimension or on their social effects, little is known on the overall impact of these media stimuli on the versatile aspects of human experience. In this context, the study by adopting a place-based approach, aims to interpret how the multiple interrelated elements of human experience can be affected by the implementation of digital installations and, ultimately, explore the potential of digital augmented public spaces to act as mediators for more responsive and citizen-centred urban environments. The theoretical framework of the study is based on fundamental Place theories which have been assessed and synthesized in order to develop a new comprehensive basis for the concept of place experience. The research project employed a pragmatic methodology to human- environment interaction which links the academic fields of urban and landscape design, phenomenology, psychology, environmental psychology and neuroscience using an embedded case study approach. It triangulated several techniques which include field observations, on-site discussions, semi-structured and in-depth phenomenological interviews, a field-based psychophysiological experiment as well as digital ethnography. The research found critical transformations in place experience during the digital augmentation of the four examined public spaces which involved changes in space’s activity, vibrancy, social interaction and level of contact with strangers, inclusion, human proxemics as well as emergence of playful behaviour, phenomena of place personalization and creative bodily expression. The main contribution of the study is threefold; a. it provides theoretical input through the examination of the affordances of urban media interventions in place experience and of their value as placemaking tools; b. it delivers methodological input through the development of a multidisciplinary pragmatic framework for the assessment and evaluation of complex phenomena associated with human experience in public space; c. it offers empirical input through the suggestion of a number of design and planning considerations for the development of active, pleasant and human-friendly urban media environments

Market Engineering

This open access book provides a broad range of insights on market engineering and information management. It covers topics like auctions, stock markets, electricity markets, the sharing economy, information and emotions in markets, smart decision-making in cities and other systems, and methodological approaches to conceptual modeling and taxonomy development. Overall, this book is a source of inspiration for everybody working on the vision of advancing the science of engineering markets and managing information for contributing to a bright, sustainable, digital world. Markets are powerful and extremely efficient mechanisms for coordinating individuals’ and organizations’ behavior in a complex, networked economy. Thus, designing, monitoring, and regulating markets is an essential task of today’s society. This task does not only derive from a purely economic point of view. Leveraging market forces can also help to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges. Moreover, markets process, generate, and reveal information. This information is a production factor and a valuable economic asset. In an increasingly digital world, it is more essential than ever to understand the life cycle of information from its creation and distribution to its use. Both markets and the flow of information should not arbitrarily emerge and develop based on individual, profit-driven actors. Instead, they should be engineered to serve best the whole society’s goals. This motivation drives the research fields of market engineering and information management. With this book, the editors and authors honor Professor Dr. Christof Weinhardt for his enormous and ongoing contribution to market engineering and information management research and practice. It was presented to him on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday in April 2021. Thank you very much, Christof, for so many years of cooperation, support, inspiration, and friendship