ImPro: Immersive Prototyping in Virtual Environments for Industrial Designers

Computer-Aided Design (CAD) constitutes an important tool for industrial designers. Similarly, Virtual Reality (VR) has the capability to revolutionize how designers work with its increased sense of scale and perspective. However, existing VR CAD applications are limited in terms of functionality and intuitive control. Based on a comparison of VR CAD applications, ImPro, a new application for immersive prototyping for industrial designers was developed. The user evaluations and comparisons show that ImPro offers increased usability, functionality, and suitability for industrial designers.TUMCREATE Phase 2, funded by the National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under its Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE) programm

Assessing Heuristic Evaluation in Immersive Virtual Reality—A Case Study on Future Guidance Systems

A variety of evaluation methods for user interfaces (UI) exist such as usability testing, cognitive walkthrough, and heuristic evaluation. However, UIs such as guidance systems at transit hubs must be evaluated in their intended application field to allow the effective and valid identification of usability flaws. However, what if evaluations are not feasible in real environments, or laboratorial conditions cannot be ensured? Based on adapted heuristics, in the present study, the method of heuristic evaluation is combined with immersive Virtual Reality (VR) for the identification of usability flaws of dynamic guidance systems (DGS) at transit hubs. The study involved usability evaluations of nine DGS concepts using the newly proposed method. The results show that compared to computer-based heuristic evaluations, the use of immersive VR led to the identification of an increased amount of “severe” usability flaws as well as overall usability flaws. Within a qualitative assessment, immersive VR is validated as a suitable tool for conducting heuristic evaluations involving significant advantages such as the creation of realistic experiences in laboratorial conditions. Future work seeks to further prove the suitability of using immersive VR for heuristic evaluations and compare the proposed method to other evaluative methods

Seeking emotions in mobility experience elicitation: A Singapore-France comparison

https://iasdr2019.org/uploads/files/Proceedings/pe-s-1056-Kon-P.pdfInternational audienceDesigning mobility experiences is complex. Technical issues can be out of a designer’s scope or require the long-term development of solutions.Emotions and contexts shapeuser perceptions ofexperiences–the stronger the emotional reaction, the better people remember theexperience. In thisexploratory study, the focusis on the research stage of the design process and seeks to identify and characterise the interactions leading to emotional responses in users’ mobility experiences. Three methods were applied to two studies inSingapore and Paris, France to collect people’s lived experiences with mobility: diarycards, user journey maps and text stimuli. Results showed that people tend not to perceive mobility experiences emotionally. When they do, the emotions trend negativelydue to deviations from expectedservice performance. Anevaluation of the methods used led toa proposed set of parameters for the developmentof a tool to design emotionalexperience

Designing Sustainable Mobility for People at Risk of Social Isolation -Two Cultural Perspectives from Singapore and France

International audienceIn both Singapore and France, the proliferation of technology in mobility services induces a risk for non-tech savvy users to be left behind. This may create barriers to mobility and contribute Henriette Cornet | Designing Sustainable Mobility for People at Risk of Social Isolation-Two Cultural Perspectives from Singapore and France | 2 to social isolation. This paper proposes to use a mix of design methods considering specific user problems. In Singapore, after shadowing and interviews with people with reduced mobilities, a persona was drafted, and two key needs for travelling were highlighted: the role of time and the reliance on other people. In France, personas were defined for non-tech savvy users during a design workshop. A new mobility service was created to answer their needs. Further work will be on (i) feeding design workshops with the identification of personas, based on interviews with persons with reduced mobility and (ii) comparing personas in Singapore and France and investigating how design actions can be conducted and evaluated in two different socio-cultural contexts

A passenger model for simulating boarding and alighting in spatially confined transportation scenarios

Crowd simulation has been widely used as a tool to demonstrate the behavior of passengers on public transport. A simulation model allows researchers to evaluate the platform or interior designs without involving real-world experimentation. In this paper, we propose a passenger model to measure the effect of different public transport vehicle layouts on the required time for boarding and alighting. We first model a low level collision avoidance behavior based on an extended social force model aiming at simulating human interactions in confined spaces. The model introduces a mechanism to emulate rotation behavior while avoiding complex geometric computations and is calibrated to experimental data. The model also allows agents to perform collision prediction in low density environments. Strategical behavior of passengers is modeled according to the recognition-primed decision paradigm and combined with the collision avoidance model. We validate our model against real-world experiments from the literature, demonstrating deviations of less than 6%. In a case study, we evaluate the boarding and alighting times required by three autonomous vehicle interior layouts proposed by industrial designers in both low-density and high-density scenarios.This work was financially supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation under its Campus for Research Excellence And Technological Enterprise (CREATE) program

Recherche, politique et pratiques en éducation : services rendus et questions posées d’un univers à l’autre

À l’occasion de son 200e numéro, la Revue française de pédagogie, revue généraliste de recherche en éducation de référence dans le monde francophone, a souhaité renouer avec l’une des interrogations fondamentales qui la caractérisent depuis sa création en 1967 : celle des rapports entre recherche, politique, administration et pratique professionnelle en éducation. Fondé sur un appel à contributions inédit, ce numéro a la particularité de ne pas regrouper uniquement des articles émanant de chercheurs, mais de croiser ceux-ci avec des contributions d’acteurs aux profils divers. Les analyses présentées permettent ainsi de couvrir une grande diversité de situations nationales et institutionnelles, notamment : rôle et fonctionnement de différents « Conseils supérieurs » en France ou au Québec, débats et controverses médiatiques et scientifiques à propos d’une loi sur « l’école inclusive » en République tchèque, construction de séquences didactiques fondées sur la recherche au Mexique, accompagnement d’établissements scolaires par la recherche dans le canton de Vaud en Suisse ou encore place de la recherche dans des revues d’interface. Deux axes majeurs structurent le numéro : l’étude de divers espaces, supports ou acteurs assurant une fonction de médiation entre les univers étudiés ; l’analyse de la place et des transformations de la recherche en contexte non strictement académique (situations d’expertise ou de formation par exemple). En cela, ce numéro apporte une contribution fondamentale aux nombreux questionnements actuels sur les rôles et la structuration de la recherche en éducation dans une société dite de la connaissance. For its 200th issue, the Revue française de pédagogie, a generalist journal of research in education and one of the leading publication on the subject in the French-speaking world, decided to take a fresh look at one the fundamental questions which have defined it since it was first published in 1967: the relationship between academic research, politics, administration and professional practice in education. Based on a new call for papers, this issue consists of articles by scholars and contributions from stakeholders from a range of backgrounds (experts, policy makers, activists etc.). The articles cover a wide variety of domestic and institutional situations including: the role and functioning of “High Councils” for education in France and Quebec; media and academic debate and controversy surrounding an "inclusive education" law in the Czech Republic; the design of teaching sequences in Mexico; research-based support for schools in the Swiss canton of Vaud; or the place of research in some professional journals which interface with the academic world. Two main themes run through the issue: the study of various spaces, resources or stakeholders which perform a mediating role between academic research and other areas, and the analysis of the place of and changes in research in a non-academic context (expertise or training situations, for instance). In this regard, this issue makes a significant contribution to the many current studies on the role of academic research and how it is organised in a so-called knowledge society