A Utility Framework for Selecting Immersive Interactive Capability and Technology for Virtual Laboratories

There has been an increase in the use of virtual reality (VR) technology in the education community since VR is emerging as a potent educational tool that offers students with a rich source of educational material and makes learning exciting and interactive. With a rise of popularity and market expansion in VR technology in the past few years, a variety of consumer VR electronics have boosted educators and researchers’ interest in using these devices for practicing engineering and science laboratory experiments. However, little is known about how such devices may be well-suited for active learning in a laboratory environment. This research aims to address this gap by formulating a utility framework to help educators and decision-makers efficiently select a type of VR device that matches with their design and capability requirements for their virtual laboratory blueprint. Furthermore, a framework use case is demonstrated by not only surveying five types of VR devices ranging from low-immersive to full-immersive along with their capabilities (i.e., hardware specifications, cost, and availability) but also considering the interaction techniques in each VR device based on the desired laboratory task. To validate the framework, a research study is carried out to compare these five VR devices and investigate which device can provide an overall best-fit for a 3D virtual laboratory content that we implemented based on the interaction level, usability and performance effectiveness

The Effects Of Multimodal Feedback And Age On A Mouse Pointing Task

As the beneficial aspects of computers become more apparent to the elderly population and the baby boom generation moves into later adulthood there is opportunity to increase performance for older computer users. Performance decrements that occur naturally to the motor skills of older adults have shown to have a negative effect on interactions with indirect-manipulation devices, such as computer mice (Murata & Iwase, 2005). Although, a mouse will always have the traits of an indirect-manipulation interaction, the inclusion of additional sensory feedback likely increases the saliency of the task to the real world resulting in increases in performance (Biocca et al., 2002). There is strong evidence for a bimodal advantage that is present in people of all ages; additionally there is also very strong evidence that older adults are a group that uses extra sensory information to increase their everyday interactions with the environment (Cienkowski & Carney, 2002; Thompson & Malloy, 2004). This study examined the effects of having multimodal feedback (i.e., visual cues, auditory cues, and tactile cues) present during a target acquisition mouse task for young, middle-aged, and older experienced computer users. This research examined the performance and subjective attitudes when performing a mouse based pointing task when different combinations of the modalities were present. The inclusion of audio or tactile cues during the task had the largest positive effect on performance, resulting in significantly quicker task completion for all of the computer users. The presence of audio or tactile cues increased performance for all of the age groups; however the performance of the older adults tended to be positively influenced more than the other age groups due the inclusion of these modalities. Additionally, the presence of visual cues did not have as strong of an effect on overall performance in comparison to the other modalities. Although the presence of audio and tactile feedback both increased performance there was evidence of a speed accuracy trade-off. Both the audio and tactile conditions resulted in a significantly higher number of misses in comparison to having no additional cues or visual cues present. So, while the presence of audio and tactile feedback improved the speed at which the task could be completed this occurred due to a sacrifice in accuracy. Additionally, this study shows strong evidence that audio and tactile cues are undesirable to computer users. The findings of this research are important to consider prior to adding extra sensory modalities to any type of user interface. The idea that additional feedback is always better may not always hold true if the feedback is found to be distracting, annoying, or negatively affects accuracy, as was found in this study with audio and tactile cues

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

1992 NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program

For the 28th consecutive year, a NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program was conducted at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The program was conducted by the University of Alabama and MSFC during the period June 1, 1992 through August 7, 1992. Operated under the auspices of the American Society for Engineering Education, the MSFC program, was well as those at other centers, was sponsored by the Office of Educational Affairs, NASA Headquarters, Washington, DC. The basic objectives of the programs, which are the 29th year of operation nationally, are (1) to further the professional knowledge of qualified engineering and science faculty members; (2) to stimulate and exchange ideas between participants and NASA; (3) to enrich and refresh the research and teaching activities of the participants' institutions; and (4) to contribute to the research objectives of the NASA centers

DEVELOPMENT OF A DESIGN METHOD TO REDUCE CHANGE PROPAGATION EFFECTS

ABSTRACT This dissertation presents a design method to reduce engineering changes caused due to change propagation effect. The method helps designers to systematically plan a verification, validation, and test (VV&T) plan. The rationale behind such a method is founded on a well-accepted principle that a robust validation plan can reduce design changes. However, such method has not yet been developed in mechanical engineering domain, so a method from software engineering has been adopted and extended to address the limitations in the existing design evaluation tools. Tools extensively used in industry, such as FMEA, and in academia have been reviewed to determine if they can identify different propagation pathways including variant, behavior, organization, and geometric pathways. As a result, it is found that variant and organizational pathways are not identified in any of these tools -- propagation in these pathways have caused major product failure in commercial vehicle and automatic fire sprinkler manufacturing industries. A seven-step VV&T method is proposed to address the aforementioned gap in which each step is tailored to suit mechanical engineering needs. The major contribution is developing the construct to identify variant and organization pathways and a prescriptive method. It has been validated in a leading commercial vehicle manufacturer, one of the passenger car manufacturing giants, and an automatic fire sprinkler manufacturer. The results from these three companies indicate the proposed VV&T method enables designers to identify variant and organizational pathways and evaluate them, which in turn can reduce design changes due to propagation effects. Objective evidence obtained from the fire sprinkler manufacturing company supports this claim. \u27If we know what assembly combination to test with, testing is not a problem...and if it can prevent a failure of this magnitude --I think this method can --it can be extremely beneficial...\u27 - Project engineer, commercial vehicle manufacture

Automated classification of humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) songs using hidden Markov models

Humpback whales songs have been widely investigated in the past few decades. This study proposes a new approach for the classification of the calls detected in the songs with the use of Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). HMMs have been used once before for such task but in an unsupervised algorithm with promising results. Here HMMs were trained and two models were employed to classify the calls into their component units and subunits. The results show that classification of humpback whale songs from one year to another is possible even with limited training. The classification is fully automated apart from the labelling of the training set and the input of the initial HMM prototype models. Two different models for the song structure are considered: one based on song units and one based on subunits. The latter model is shown to achieve better recognition results with a reduced need for updating when applied to a variety of recordings from different years and different geographic locations

Evolution and usability of mobile phone interaction styles

Over one billion people own or use cellular mobile telephones. Therefore, industry practitioners are faced with a question: how big steps can they take when designing the user interfaces for their new products, or how closely should they stick with the already existing user interface conventions that may already be familiar to the consumers. The objective of this research work is to create and communicate new knowledge for design and usability practitioners about how to design and evolve interaction style conventions in mainstream, voice-centric mobile telephones. In the context of this study, interaction style denotes the framework consisting of the physical interaction objects, the abstract interaction elements, and the associated behavior or interaction conventions that are applied throughout the core functionality of the mobile phone, but excludes the stylistic appearance elements of the user interface. The main research problem — how do mobile phone interaction style changes affect the initial usability of a mobile phone for users with earlier experience with mobile phones — is approached via several methods. A literature study compares the interaction styles applied in mainstream computing domains against the aspects relevant in the mobile phones domain. A heuristic analysis of contemporary mobile phones is used to formulate an understanding of the available interaction styles and analyze whether there is convergence towards specific types of interaction styles in the industry. An empirical usability testing experiment with 38 test users is conducted with a novel mobile phone interaction style to investigate differences between users who are already familiar with different mobile phone interaction styles. The study reveals that interaction styles applied in contemporary mobile telephones are designed around menu navigation, and they implement the three primary operations — Select, Back and Menu access — with dedicated hardkeys, context-sensitive softkeys, or using special control devices like joysticks or jog dials. The control keys in the contemporary interaction styles are converging around various two- and three-softkey conventions. The aspects related to indirect manipulation and small displays pose specific usability and UI design challenges on mobile phone user interfaces. The study shows that the mobile handset manufacturers are applying their usually proprietary interaction styles in a rather consistent manner in their products, with the notable exception of mobile Internet browsers that often break the underlying interaction style consistency. Based on the results from the empirical usability testing, we claim that despite differences between interaction styles in contemporary mobile phones, users do not face significant difficulties when transferring to a novel mobile phone model.reviewe