Evaluating user experience with respect to user expectations in brain-computer interface games

Evaluating user experience (UX) with respect to previous experiences can provide insight into whether a product can positively aect a user's opinion about a technology. If it can, then we can say that the product provides a positive UX. In this paper we propose a method to assess the UX in BCI systems with respect to user expectations. We demonstrate the application of our method in a preliminary study. The study results showed that BCI game control was natural and enjoyable despite the low reliability of the BCI. However SSVEP based selection induced fatigue on participants. The proposed method can extract the right and wrong practices to employ BCI in applications and can suggest interaction paradigms or considerations to follow when developing BCI systems

Meeting the expectations from brain-computer interfaces

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are often evaluated in terms of performance and seldom for usability. However in some application domains, such as entertainment computing, user experience evaluation is vital. User experience evaluation in BCI systems, especially in entertainment applications such as games, can be biased due to the novelty of the interface.However, as the novelty will eventually vanish, whatmatters is the user experience related to the unique features offered by BCI. Therefore it is a viable approach to compare BCI to other novel modalities, such as a speech or motion recognizer, rather than the traditional mouse and keyboard. In the study that we present in this article, our participants played a computer game with a BCI and an automatic speech recognizer (ASR), and they rated their expectations and experiences for both modalities. Our analysis on subjective ratings revealed that both ASR and BCI were successful in satisfying participants' expectations in general. Participants found speech control easier to learn than BCI control. They indicated that BCI control induced more fatigue than they expected

User expectations and experiences of a speech and thought controlled computer game

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are often evaluated in terms of performance and seldom for usability. However in some application domains, such as entertainment computing, user experience evaluation is vital. User experience evaluation in BCI systems, especially in entertainment applications such as games, can be biased due to the novelty of the interface. However, as the novelty will eventually vanish, what matters is the user experience related to the unique features offered by BCI. Therefore it is a viable approach to compare BCI to other novel modalities, such as a speech or motion recogniser, rather than the traditional mouse and keyboard. In the study which we present in this paper, our participants played a computer game with a BCI and an automatic speech recogniser (ASR) and they rated their expectations and experiences for both modalities. Our analysis on subjective ratings revealed that both ASR and BCI were successful in satisfying participants' expectations in general. Participants found speech control easier to learn than BCI control. They indicated that BCI control induced more fatigue than they expected

SimSense - Gestural Interaction Design for Information Exchange between Large Public Displays and Personal Mobile Devices

Large displays in public and semi-public spaces continuously permeate our everyday lives as the price of display hardware continues to drop. These displays act as sources of information, entertainment and advertisement in public environments such as airports, hotels, universities, retail stores, hospitals, and stadiums, amongst others. The information shown on these displays often varies in form that ranges from simple text to rich interactive content. However, most of this rich information remains in the displays and methods to effectively retrieve them to ones’ mobile devices without the need to explicitly manipulate them remains unexplored. Sensing technologies were used to implement a use case, wherein a person can simply walk up to a public display, retrieve interesting content onto their personal device without having the need to take it out of their pockets or bags. For this purpose a novel system called SimSense, which is capable of automatically detecting and establishing a connection with mobile phones that come in close proximity with the public display was developed. This thesis presents two alternative mid-air hand gesture interaction techniques: ‘Grab & Pull’ and ‘Grab & Drop’ to retrieve content from the public display without explicitly operating the mobile device. The results of a laboratory experiment conducted to evaluate these interaction techniques and gather preliminary impressions on the overall concept, are also presented. The results indicate that participants found ‘Grab & Pull’ to be slightly easier, more confident, and requires less effort to perform in comparison with ‘Grab & Drop’. Participants found the overall concept to be seamless and a useful way to retrieve interesting content

Toward Efficient Academia-Industry Collaboration: A Case Study of Joint VR System Development

Collaborative academia-industry development and evaluation of virtual reality (VR) systems is a mutually beneficial opportunity to investigate VR technology in a real context and conduct user studies with target users. However, such collaboration is rarely performed due to variations in project pace and work methods. In this article, we introduce the process of action research on joint design, development, and evaluation of a collaborative VR system to address industrial needs. The paper further presents employees’ subjective opinions and perceived value of industrial VR applica- tions and reflects on their involvement throughout the process. The article concludes with a process-oriented framework for remote academia-industry collaboration, supported with practical sugges- tions on how to support this collaboration. Our experiences reveal the methods and advantages of remote collaboration in all phases of the process and signify the efficiency of the remote framework for academia-industry collaboration, especially relevant in the light of the COVID-19 pandemiaacceptedVersionPeer reviewe

Asynchronous industrial collaboration : How virtual reality and virtual tools aid the process of maintenance method development and documentation creation

In the light of Industry 4.0, the field of Industrial Maintenance faces a large digital transformation, adopting Extended Reality (XR) technologies to aid industrial operations. For the manufacturing corporations that provide maintenance services, the efficiency of industrial maintenance plays a crucial role in the competitiveness and is tightly related to the technical documentation supporting maintenance. However, the process of documentation creation faces several challenges due to lack of access to the physical equipment and difficulties in remote communication between globally distributed departments. To address these shortcomings, this research investigates the utilization of Virtual Reality (VR) to facilitate asynchronous collaboration of globally dispersed departments involved in the pipeline of maintenance method and documentation creation. The presented proof-of-concept (the COVE-VR platform) has been developed as an academia-industry collaboration and evaluated iteratively with subject matter experts. The proposed VR platform consists of two virtual environments and eight virtual tools, which allow interaction with virtual prototypes (3D CAD models) and means of digital content creation. Our findings show the high relevance of the developed solution for the needs of industrial departments and the ability to support asynchronous collaboration among them. This article delivers qualitative findings on the value of VR technology and presents guidelines on how to develop virtual tools for digital content creation within VR, adaptable to other industrial contexts. We suggest providing embedded guidance and design consistency to ensure smooth interactions with virtual tools and further discuss the importance of proper positioning, the transparency of operations and the information property of generated content.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Propuesta de interacción multimodal: caso de estudio navegación en mapas

Este trabajo presenta una propuesta del componente de interacción de usuario multimodal para ser integrado principalmente con aplicaciones de computación visual 2D/3D. El componente considera múltiples canales de entrada deinformación funcionando simultáneamente. Sobre cada canal de entrada se define un proceso de tratamiento de información que corresponde a una modalidad de interacción disponible al usuario. La información resultante de las diferentes modalidades se integra para definir acciones/comandos conjuntos de interacción hacia la aplicación computacional. La interacción multimodalbusca ser más natural para el usuario, lo cual significa una interacción más fácil y agradable. La propuesta fue validada integrando una componente de interacción multimodal basada en gestos manuales y voz con la aplicaciónBing-Maps para realizar la tarea de navegación en mapas 2D en un ambiente de visualización de mediano formato. El prototipo de integración fue validado por un conjunto de usuarios y se obtuvieron resultados preliminares de sufuncionalidad y de la experiencia de usuario resultante

The Benefits of Extended Reality for Technical Communication : Utilizing XR for Maintenance Documentation Creation and Delivery

The main goal of this dissertation is to explore the benefits of extended reality for technical communication. Both of these fields offer opportunities and also pose challenges to each other, and this dissertation provides insight into this relationship. The research was initiated by the author’s personal interest in both fields and also human-technology interaction and user needs in general. Even though this is an academic dissertation, it is first and foremost a practitioner’s view of these evolving technologies and their potential uses in industry and, specifically, in industrial maintenance and technical communication. Under the umbrella of extended reality and technical communication, this dissertation focuses on two main themes. The first part studies virtual reality as a technology to facilitate collaboration and digital content creation for technical documentation in industrial companies, and the second part explores the possibilities of augmented reality and smart glasses as a delivery channel for maintenance instructions. The developed concepts were tested by domain experts in user tests. The overall results of testing were positive, and domain experts expressed enthusiasm toward the concepts and technologies in general. The technical documentation process is an inherently collaborative process involving stakeholders from different teams and organizations, and virtual reality was evaluated to have a positive effect on that process, especially in the case of globally scattered teams. The developed tools were also rated positively for digital content creation. Therefore, virtual reality offers many benefits for technical documentation creation, an area where it has not been utilized until now. On the augmented reality side, domain experts were generally enthusiastic about the use of smart glasses even though the technologies are not yet mature enough for field use in industrial maintenance. Furthermore, the results show that content created in the technical communications industry standard, DITA XML, works well when delivered to smart glasses, and the same content can be single sourced to other delivery channels. The use of DITA XML, therefore, eliminates the need to tailor content for each delivery channel separately, and offers an effective way to create and update content for AR applications in industrial companies. This, in turn, can advance the use of AR technologies and related devices in field operations in industrial companies. In conclusion, the findings of this dissertation show that the fields of technical communication and extended reality have a significant amount of synergy. In this dissertation I establish use cases and guidelines for these areas