Pekka Kallioniemi

Guidelines for Designing Interactive Omnidirectional Video Applications

Interactive omnidirectional videos (iODV) can offer informative, entertaining, and immersive experiences, especially when combined with novel platforms such as head-mounted displays. However, omnidirectional videos, and interaction with them, present many unique challenges. In the absence of existing guidelines that accommodate for these challenges, we present dos and don’ts for designing and producing interactive omnidirectional videos. We base these guidelines on numerous interactive systems that we have produced in the recent years. Our work offers useful guidance for those working with omnidirectional videos, especially when designing interactivity and navigation within such systems.

Berlin Kompass: Multimodal Gameful Empowerment for Foreign Language Learning

This article presents an innovative, gameful, multimodal, and authentic learning environment for training of oral communication in a foreign language—a virtual adventure called Berlin Kompass. After a brief presentation of the pedagogical and technological backgrounds, the system is described. Central results of a series of pilots in autumn 2013 with around 100 upper secondary pupils are described and further steps are discussed. The results are highly promising, and the concept was highly appreciated by the pupils regardless of some technical problems that the prototype had during the pilots. The researcher observations and the questionnaire results show that the concept manages to create a new motivating collaborative learning context with clear added value compared with equal tasks realized in a typical classroom approach.

Evaluating landmark attraction model in collaborative wayfinding in virtual learning environments

In Virtual Learning Environments efficient navigation is a major issue, especially when it is used as a component in the learning process. This paper addresses the challenges in creating meaningful navigation routes from language learning perspective. The work is grounded on findings from a specific case on German language learning, wherein two remotely located users communicated in a wayfinding guidance scenario. The users navigated through 360-degree virtual panoramic images using body gestures and could receive communication help via spoken hints by pointing at objects in the scenery. An important design consideration is how to choose these objects, as they have both navigational importance and pedagogical significance in terms of learning the desired language. Wayfinding interactions from 21 participants were compared to the values provided by a landmark attraction model applied on the landmarks along the routes. The results show that there was a clear connection between prominence of landmarks and time spent on each panorama. This indicates that together with pedagogical planning, the model can aid in selecting the interactive content for language learning applications in virtual environments.

Model for landmark highlighting in mobile web services

We introduce a model for landmark highlighting for pedestrian route guidance services for mobile devices. The model determines which landmarks are the most attractive based on their properties in the current context of users orientation and the location on the route and highlights these landmarks on the mobile map. The attractiveness of a landmark is based on its visual, structural and semantic properties which are used for calculating the total attractiveness of a single landmark. This model was evaluated with voluntary users conducted in laboratory environment. Test subjects were shown images of street intersections from where they selected the most attractive and prominent landmarks in the routes context. We then compared these results with the landmarks selected by the model. The results show that landmarks highlighted by the model were the same ones that were selected by the participants as most salient landmarks.

User Experience and Immersion of Interactive Omnidirectional Videos in CAVE Systems and Head-Mounted Displays

Omnidirectional video (ODV) is a medium that offers the viewer a 360-degree panoramic video view of the recorded setting. In recent years, various novel platforms for presenting such content have emerged. Many of these applications aim to offer an immersive and interactive experience for the user, but there has been little research on how immersive these solutions actually are. For this study, two interactive ODV (iODV) applications were evaluated: a CAVE system and a head-mounted display (HMD) application. We compared the users’ expectations and experience and the level of immersion between these systems. Both indoor and outdoor recorded environments were included. First, the results indicate that the user’s experiences with these applications exceed their expectations greatly. Second, the HMD application was found to be more immersive than the CAVE system. Based on the findings of this study, both systems seem to have a great potential for presenting ODV content, thus offering the user an immersive experience for both indoor and outdoor content.

Collaborative navigation in virtual worlds: how gender and game experience influence user behavior

There exists a large base of evidence for gender differences in human navigation. However, there is not much research on gender differences in collaborative aspects of navigation, including the interaction of individuals during collaborative wayfinding tasks in virtual environments. In light of this, we present a study of a collaborative virtual environment, Berlin Kompass. The goal of this study was to find out the main differences between genders in collaborative wayfinding. The application was evaluated in the context of foreign language learning in schools with over 200 students, where the users navigated through cityscapes while interacting verbally with each other. We collected and analyzed interaction logs, questionnaire data and audio and video recordings to gain insights into gender-related differences in wayfinding in virtual worlds. Our findings suggest that several differences that are evident in single user systems are not present when the collaborative aspect is added. Male users were more immersed during the task than females. One of the explaining factors for this might be video game experience. Genders also communicated differently -- males spoke in longer utterances whereas females had more, shorter utterances. Males referred more to relative directions and dynamic landmarks such as cars and pedestrians while navigating. Males with more video game experience also provided more positive subjective user experience feedback on the application.

Effect of gender on immersion in collaborative iODV applications

Interactive omnidirectional video (iODV) is a media format that allows the user to explore and interact with a 360-degree view of the recorded scenery. Recently, novel collaborative applications for presenting iODV content have emerged. Often their goal is to offer as immersive as possible experience to the users. Previous studies suggest that gender affects the §of immersion in virtual environments and other media, but there has been only little research on immersion in iODVs, and nothing in the context of collaborative interaction. In this research, we studied gender effect with participants (N=30, 15 pairs) performing a collaborative wayfinding task. Subjective data gathered with a customized immersion questionnaire showed statistically significant differences between male and female participants in Spatial Immersion and Involvement subscales. There were no statistical differences in Interaction, Realness, Physical and Auditory subscales. Several possibly affecting factors were observed during the task completion. Our results also indicate that performing interactive, collaborative tasks in iODV applications helps building a shared understanding between the users.

Mobile dictation for healthcare professionals

We demonstrate a mobile dictation application utilizing automatic speech recognition for healthcare professionals. Development was done in close collaboration between human-technology interaction and nursing science researchers and professionals working in the area. Our work was motivated by the need for improvements in getting spoken patient information to the next treatment steps without additional steps. In addition, we wanted to enable truly mobile spoken information entry, i.e., dictation can take place on the spot. In order to study the applicability we conducted a small-scale Wizard-of-Oz evaluation in a real hospital environment with real nurses. Our main focus was to gather subjective expectations and experiences from the actual nurses themselves. The results show true potential for our mobile dictation application and its further development.

Overcoming socio-technical challenges for cross-cultural collaborative applications

Our research focuses on facilitating access to cross-cultural collaborative applications for schoolchildren. In this paper, we present two user studies with students from an underprivileged region in Delhi. In the first study, we found that Indian students were hesitant when using the application as compared with Finnish students in a similar study, for example. We purport these challenges were social - related to face-saving and power-distance - and technical - related to lack of access to and experience with computers. In the second study, we presented a dramatized scenario before the task to address the socio-technical challenges. Our findings suggest that adding a dramatized scenario facilitated meaningful collaboration by (a) overcoming the lack of previous computer and gaming experience and (b) reducing social and cultural barriers towards communication. We believe these findings extend to cross-cultural collaboration between students with varying computer experience.

Hotspot Interaction in Omnidirectional Videos Using Head-Mounted Displays

Omnidirectional videos (ODVs) -- or 360° videos -- are often viewed using a head-mounted display (HMD), allowing users to look around the scene naturally by turning their head. These videos may be populated with visual markers, hotspots, that can contain additional information of points of interest or provide additional functionality. However, optimal ways for interacting and presenting these hotspots remain unclear. We conducted a 16-participant user study where participants interacted with hotspots with different properties while exploring ODVs. We tested 1) two hotspot activation types, dwell time and fade-in, 2) small and large hotspot icon sizes, and 3) centered and left-edge alignments for the appearing content. We found that a combination of fade-in activation, centered alignment, and large icons generally performs the best, but also that user preferences are diverse. Based on our results, we provide recommendations for optimizing the designs for systems utilizing hotspot interactions with HMDs.