Soojeong Yoo

Controller-less Interaction Methods for Google Cardboard

Google Cardboard was recently released as Googles attempt to virtual reality (VR) which has made it more accessible, with its low-cost and easy assembly. The purpose of this research is to provide an initial analysis of controller-less interaction and highlight its potential for enabling a truly portable and accessible VR experience.

To Dwell or Not to Dwell: An Evaluation of Mid-Air Gestures for Large Information Displays

This paper investigates user preferences for mid-air gestures to interact with large public information displays. We designed and implemented a public display application that allows people to navigate between Twitter feeds and to find details about particular tweets. The application supports selection and navigation through (1) point-and-dwell and (2) push and grab-and-pull. A within-subject evaluation with 10 participants found that although point-and-dwell was perceived to be more accurate, push was preferred for selecting items and grab-and-pull was preferred for navigation. Based on our findings we derive recommendations for designing gesture-based information displays.

Evaluating the Actual and Perceived Exertion Provided by Virtual Reality Games

Virtual Reality games have shown potential to make exercise fun and engaging. This is because many virtual reality games, using devices like the HTC Vive, offer engaging experiences where interaction requires the player to physically move around, moving their arms and body. This paper presents the first work evaluating the actual and perceived exertion in four existing virtual reality games. Our key contribution is in the insights about the exertion provided by four diverse types of VR games, highlighting their potential value for improving exercise levels. Our work points to the need for standards to classify VR games in terms of both the cardiovascular level and the particular muscle groups

VRun: running-in-place virtual reality exergame

Exercise is important for health and well-being. However, for some people it can be hard to find the time or motivation to get the recommended amount every day. Exergames on modern gaming consoles have demonstrated potential to address this problem, by helping people stay motivated, which subsequently benefited their health. Fully-immersive virtual reality has the potential to achieve similar benefits. In this paper we present VRun, a virtual reality exergame developed for Google Cardboard. The game requires the user to physically run through a virtual world, with activity detected through the smartphones accelerometer. We performed an evaluation of the game in three different formats, comparing virtual reality with a large wall display and a baseline laptop. This is the first evaluation of a running-in-place virtual reality exergame.

Towards a Long Term Model of Virtual Reality Exergame Exertion

Virtual reality (VR) exergames have the potential to be a fun way to get exercise. People have different preferences and responses when it comes to both exercising an playing games, meaning that there are potential benefits from creating a user model for exergaming. This could support various forms of personalization, such as game recommenders, and personalization within a game. We define a VR exergame user model, VRex, that represents a users exertion as well a their goals and preferences for exercise and for games We illustrate the use of VRex to represent 1 users who played 4 games, based on data about their actual and perceived exertion and their satisfaction with each game. This demonstrates the diversity of the user models, in terms of the user models components. This is the first work to explore the design of user models for virtual reality exergames and has the potential to serve as a foundation for game personalization, recommenders and open model interfaces.

Towards Adaptive Height-Aware Public Interactive Displays

Public interactive displays (PIDs) are becoming more pervasive in urban environments as a means to engage passers-by and to provide interactive features such as wayfinding. However, one of the problems with current PIDs is that they are typically designed around an average specification, potentially excluding a large range of users that for instance might not be able to reach interactive elements. To address this challenge, we propose a number of design concepts for adjusting PIDs to users of different heights. We present a preliminary evaluation of our concepts through a cognitive walk-through study with 10 design experts using a custom-developed experience prototype featuring four height-aware modes. Based on qualitative feedback and observations we discuss design suggestions for future work.

Designing a Personalized VR Exergame

Exercise is essential for health and well-being. However, it can be difficult for people to meet the recommended amount of daily exercise simply due to the lack of motivation. It has recently become apparent that virtual reality games, even though they were not explicitly designed for exercise, have the potential to provide enough exercise to achieve recommended levels of activity for a day, while keeping people motivated. However, as these games have not generally not been designed for exercise, there is a risk that people may either under- or over-exert themselves. Therefore, in this paper we present and discuss our design for a virtual reality exergame that utilizes a user model and dynamic difficulty adjustment to deliver personalized activity levels and experiences.

Body-map: visualising exertion in virtual reality games

Virtual reality (VR) games offer potential as a fun and immersive way to get enough physical activity to gain significant health benefits. Currently, there is no established way to describe the type and level of physical activity a person can expect to gain when playing a VR game. Nor is there a way of reporting to a person about the exercise they actually did. To address this, we have designed a visual overview that depicts the nature of exercise an individual actually did. To assess the visualisation, we selected four VR games with very different exercise profiles. We used them in a qualitative study with 7 people, so that we could demonstrate how our visualisation could represent the individual differences in the nature and level of physical activity for each game. Our contribution is the design of the first visualisation to represent the nature of exercise gained in VR games, as a personalised, compact summary of the exertion an individual had in a game.

VRmove: Design Framework for Balancing Enjoyment, Movement and Exertion in VR Games

Since the release of the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift tracking has improved, leading to virtual reality (VR) games that allow players to stand and physically move around virtual environments. Consequently, these VR games can provide players with beneficial levels of exercise. In this paper we provide a design framework for using activity sensor data within VR games called VRmove. This framework was derived from an analyses of data from studies of 18 players over 4 diverse commercial VR games to identify key elements for exertion and enjoyment: actual and perceived exertion being key for representing the gain from the fun disguising the effort and the multi-factorial element of movement involved. The rationale of this work is to demonstrate the use of the VRmove framework to inform the design of a new game. This works core contribution is the VRmove framework, which informs the design of future VR games so they are exerting while still being enjoyable.

Harnessing Virtual Reality Exergames and Physical Fitness Sensing to Create a Personalised Game and Dashboard

Exercise is important for health and well-being. However, for many people, it can be hard to find the time or motivation to get the recommended amount of exercise. It has recently become apparent that virtual reality exergames, have the potential to address this problem, by helping people stay motivated to exercise. This research explores how to harness the motivating power of virtual reality exergames to support long-term physical activity. We do this by creating an infrastructure that captures data from virtual reality games, with physical data captured by sensors, then using this to provide a personal dashboard of in-game exertion and measures of fitness.