Embodying photorealistic personalized avatars that closely resemble their users has recently become technologically achievable in virtual reality (VR). While previous work highlighted several benefits of personalization, its impact on emotions, a central VR element, remains underexplored. Given their high production cost, assessing the added value of photorealistic personalized avatars is essential before their adoption as a design feature. To address this, we designed and validated (n=302) four virtual environments (VEs) that induce emotions in different quadrants of Russell’s Circumplex Model. Using these VEs, we systematically investigated the impact of avatar type (no avatar, generic avatar, personalized avatar) on perceived emotions and physiological responses (n=51). Generic avatars enhanced valence, arousal, embodiment, presence and selected physiological measures, while personalized avatars further amplified these effects and additionally increased heart rate variability, a marker of self-regulation. Our study demonstrates that photorealistic personalized avatars markedly enhance VR’s capacity to foster emotional engagement.

Virtual Reality (VR) designers and researchers often need to measure emotions and presence as they evolve over time. The experience sampling method (ESM) is a common way to achieve this, however, ESM disrupts the experience and lacks granularity. We propose \tool{}, a new method for measuring subjective emotions and presence in VR, where users watch back their VR experience and retrospectively sketch a plot of their feelings. RetroSketch leaves the VR experience undisturbed and yields highly granular data, including information about salient events and qualitative descriptions of their feelings. We compared RetroSketch and ESM in a large study (n=140) using five different VR experiences over one-hour sessions. Our results show that RetroSketch and ESM measures are highly correlated with each other, as well as physiological measures indicative of emotion. The correlations are robust across different VR experiences and user demographics. They also highlight the impact of ESM on users' experience.

Immersive visualisations, that enable spatial, embodied exploration (e.g., XR and physicalisations), have the potential to increase user engagement with data representations. However, which mode of representation offers a higher engagement, and how does the user experience differ? Our work compares a physicalisation to a mobile AR representation of energy consumption sources and CO2 emissions. In a counter-balanced study with 16 participants, we found no significant differences in perceived user engagement, except for higher scores in “perceived usability’’. The physicalisation was considered ‘real’ and intuitive, the AR representation technical and precise. Most participants preferred the physicalisation and felt more ‘connected’ with it. We also analysed patterns of how people moved around the representations, and found no differences between conditions. Despite people being able to touch the physicalisation, this was barely made use of—thereby turning both conditions into visual exploration. We discuss what rationale participants provided for barely touching and discuss implications.

There is great potential for adapting Virtual Reality (VR) exergames based on a user’s affective state. However, physical activity and VR interfere with physiological sensors, making affect recognition challenging. We conducted a study (n=72) in which users experienced four emotion inducing VR exergaming environments (happiness, sadness, stress and calmness) at three different levels of exertion (low, medium, high). We collected physiological measures through pupillometry, electrodermal activity, heart rate, and facial tracking, as well as subjective affect ratings. Our validated virtual environments, data, and analyses are openly available. We found that the level of exertion influences the way affect can be recognised, as well as affect itself. Furthermore, our results highlight the importance of data cleaning to account for environmental and interpersonal factors interfering with physiological measures. The results shed light on the relationships between physiological measures and affective states and inform design choices about sensors and data cleaning approaches for affective VR.

I could feel my mind buzzing after another long day at work. Driving home, I am looking forward to my “me time” ritual of playing with colors. As I arrive, I get myself comfortable, pick up an oran...

This pictorial introduces TangibleTouch, a toolkit to design and build interactive tangible cubes using capacitive sensing. This toolkit enables designers to quickly prototype and explore tangible cubes with exchangeable capacitive panels that allows touch-based gestures and interactions that can be used for tangible input in VR, AR, or physical computing. We introduce a design space for TangibleTouch, and present the technical implementation, fabrication approaches, and software support for designers. We evaluate our toolkit by demonstrating its use and application for 3 different case studies: a media controller, a platform game, and a 3D model inspection tool. The contribution of our work is a novel toolkit method for constructing and fabricating a cube-based interactive tangible user interface.

The increasing availability of portable handheld mobile Augmented Reality technology is revolutionising the way digital information is embedded into the real world. As this data is embedded, it enables new forms of cross-device collaborative work. However, despite the widespread availability of handheld AR, little is known about the role that device configurations and size play on collaboration. This paper presents a study that examines how completing tasks using a simple mobile AR interface on different device sizes and configurations impacts key factors of collaboration such as collaboration strategy, behaviour, and efficacy. Our results show subtle differences between device size and configurations that have a direct influence on the way people approach tasks and interact with virtual models. We highlight key observations and strategies that people employ across different device sizes and configurations.

Eye gaze and head movement are attractive for hands-free 3D interaction in head-mounted displays, but existing interfaces afford only limited control. Radi-Eye is a novel pop-up radial interface designed to maximise expressiveness with input from only the eyes and head. Radi-Eye provides widgets for discrete and continuous input and scales to support larger feature sets. Widgets can be selected with Look & Cross, using gaze for pre-selection followed by head-crossing as trigger and for manipulation. The technique leverages natural eye-head coordination where eye and head move at an offset unless explicitly brought into alignment, enabling interaction without risk of unintended input. We explore Radi-Eye in three augmented and virtual reality applications, and evaluate the effect of radial interface scale and orientation on performance with Look & Cross. The results show that Radi-Eye provides users with fast and accurate input while opening up a new design space for hands-free fluid interaction.

As physicalizations encode data in their physical 3D form, the orientation in which the user is viewing the physicalization may impact the way the information is perceived. However, this relation between user orientation and perception of physical properties is not well understood or studied. To investigate this relation, we conducted an experimental study with 20 participants who viewed 6 exemplars of physicalizations from 4 different perspectives. Our findings show that perception is directly influenced by user orientation as it affects (i) the number and type of clusters, (ii) anomalies and (iii) extreme values identified within a physicalization. Our results highlight the complexity and variability of the relation between user orientation and perception of physicalizations.

In this paper we present ZenG, a neurofeedback ARapplication concept based on Zen Gardening to fostercreativity, self-awareness, and relaxation through embodiedinteractions in a mixed reality environment. We developedan initial prototype which combined physiological sensingthrough EEG with AR visualisation on the Magic LeapDisplay. We evaluated the prototype through preliminaryuser testing with 12 adults. Results suggest users found theexperience to be enjoyable and relaxing, however theapplication could be improved by including more featuresand functionality. ZenG shows the potential for AR toprovide immersive and interactive environments that couldpromote creativity and relaxation, providing solid groundsfor further research.

The article addresses a key challenge in the design of content for pervasive displays: how to engage passers-by who have limited time and attention? To achieve this, we apply a novel approach for computational design of interesting display content using tiled layouts. We present a model of display foraging based on information foraging theory to describe the behavior of a rational but time-limited user looking at a display. Accordingly, our work aims to maximize the information gain for tiled displays. This complex problem is divided into two phases: (1) generating designs of tiled layouts and (2) assigning content options to individual tiles based on what predicted by display foraging. Accordingly, a proof-of-concept system was realized then evaluated computationally and empirically with a control study and field study. The results show that the proposed system can engage significantly more people than typical digital signage.