Virual world users evaluated according to environment design, task based adn affective attention measures

This paper presents research that engages with virtual worlds for education users to understand design of these applications for their needs. An in-depth multi-method investigation from 12 virtual worlds participants was undertaken in three stages; initially a small scale within-subjects eye-tracking comparison was made between the role playing game 'RuneScape' and the virtual social world 'Second Life', secondly an in-depth evaluation of eye-tracking data for Second Life tasks (i.e. avatar, object and world based) was conducted, finally a qualitative evaluation of Second Life tutorials in comparative 3D situations (i.e. environments that are; realistic to surreal, enclosed to open, formal to informal) was conducted. Initial findings identified increased users attention within comparable gaming and social world interactions. Further analysis identified that 3D world focused interactions increased participants' attention more than object and avatar tasks. Finally different 3D situation designs altered levels of task engagement and distraction through perceptions of comfort, fun and fear. Ultimately goal based and environment interaction tasks can increase attention and potentially immersion. However, affective perceptions of 3D situations can negatively impact on attention. An objective discussion of the limitations and benefits of virtual world immersion for student learning is presented

Exploring the Affective Loop

Research in psychology and neurology shows that both body and mind are involved when experiencing emotions (Damasio 1994, Davidson et al. 2003). People are also very physical when they try to communicate their emotions. Somewhere in between beings consciously and unconsciously aware of it ourselves, we produce both verbal and physical signs to make other people understand how we feel. Simultaneously, this production of signs involves us in a stronger personal experience of the emotions we express. Emotions are also communicated in the digital world, but there is little focus on users' personal as well as physical experience of emotions in the available digital media. In order to explore whether and how we can expand existing media, we have designed, implemented and evaluated /eMoto/, a mobile service for sending affective messages to others. With eMoto, we explicitly aim to address both cognitive and physical experiences of human emotions. Through combining affective gestures for input with affective expressions that make use of colors, shapes and animations for the background of messages, the interaction "pulls" the user into an /affective loop/. In this thesis we define what we mean by affective loop and present a user-centered design approach expressed through four design principles inspired by previous work within Human Computer Interaction (HCI) but adjusted to our purposes; /embodiment/ (Dourish 2001) as a means to address how people communicate emotions in real life, /flow/ (Csikszentmihalyi 1990) to reach a state of involvement that goes further than the current context, /ambiguity/ of the designed expressions (Gaver et al. 2003) to allow for open-ended interpretation by the end-users instead of simplistic, one-emotion one-expression pairs and /natural but designed expressions/ to address people's natural couplings between cognitively and physically experienced emotions. We also present results from an end-user study of eMoto that indicates that subjects got both physically and emotionally involved in the interaction and that the designed "openness" and ambiguity of the expressions, was appreciated and understood by our subjects. Through the user study, we identified four potential design problems that have to be tackled in order to achieve an affective loop effect; the extent to which users' /feel in control/ of the interaction, /harmony and coherence/ between cognitive and physical expressions/,/ /timing/ of expressions and feedback in a communicational setting, and effects of users' /personality/ on their emotional expressions and experiences of the interaction

Modelling 3D product visualisation for online retail atmospherics

Purpose: The Stimulus (S) Organism (O) Responses (R) paradigm has been extensively studied in conventional retailing but has received little attention in the online context. This study aims to investigate the effects of an online retailer atmospheric using three dimensional (3D) product visualisation. Design/methods/approach: We operationalise 3D antecedents, the main online atmospheric cues, as the “stimulus” (S) that attracts consumers’ attention towards the online retailer, authenticity of the 3D, hedonic and utilitarian value as the “organism” (O) part, and consumers’ behavioural intention as the “responses” (R) part. A hypothetical retailer Web site presents a variety of laptops using 3D product visualisations. Findings: The control and animated colours represent the main stimuli (S). Furthermore, 3D authenticity, hedonic and utilitarian values are the main determinants of behavioural intentions. The proposed conceptual model achieves acceptable fit and the hypothesised paths are all valid. Practical implications: Retail website designers can contribute to enhancing consumers’ virtual experience by focusing more on utilitarian and hedonic value. Any 3D flash should include the essential information that consumers seek and consumers should be able to click to any part of the 3D flash to access further information. Originality/values: To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the U.K. that uses a U.K. sample to investigate the effects of using 3D product visualisation on consumers’ perceptions and responses. Our research makes an important contribution to the online atmospheric literature by providing a rich explanation of how authenticity of the 3D virtual models adds more information, fun and enhances consumers’ responses towards the online retailer

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

The Impact of Experiential Augmented Reality Applications on Fashion Purchase Intention

Utilizing the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of augmented reality (AR) (specifically augmentation) on consumers’ affective and behavioral response and to assess whether consumers’ hedonic motivation for shopping moderates this relationship. An experiment using the manipulation of AR and no AR was conducted with 162 participants aged between 18 and 35. Participants were recruited through snowball sampling and randomly assigned to the control or stimulus group. The hypothesized associations were analyzed using linear regression with bootstrapping. The paper demonstrates the benefit of using an experiential AR retail application (app) to positively impact purchase intention. The results show this effect is mediated by positive affective response. Furthermore, hedonic shopping motivation moderates the relationship between augmentation and the positive affective response. Because of the chosen research approach, the results may lack generalizability to other forms of augmentation. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed model using different types of AR stimuli. Furthermore, replication of the study with other populations would increase the generalizability of the findings. Results of this study provide a valuable reference for retailers of the benefits of using AR when attempting to optimize experiential value in online environments. The study contributes to experiential retail and consumer purchase behavior research by deepening the conceptualization of the impact of experiential technologies, more specifically AR apps, by considering the role of hedonic shopping motivations.Peer reviewe

Survey of the State of the Art in Natural Language Generation: Core tasks, applications and evaluation

This paper surveys the current state of the art in Natural Language Generation (NLG), defined as the task of generating text or speech from non-linguistic input. A survey of NLG is timely in view of the changes that the field has undergone over the past decade or so, especially in relation to new (usually data-driven) methods, as well as new applications of NLG technology. This survey therefore aims to (a) give an up-to-date synthesis of research on the core tasks in NLG and the architectures adopted in which such tasks are organised; (b) highlight a number of relatively recent research topics that have arisen partly as a result of growing synergies between NLG and other areas of artificial intelligence; (c) draw attention to the challenges in NLG evaluation, relating them to similar challenges faced in other areas of Natural Language Processing, with an emphasis on different evaluation methods and the relationships between them.Comment: Published in Journal of AI Research (JAIR), volume 61, pp 75-170. 118 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl