Synthetic vision on head-mounted displays (HMDs) has developed into an increasingly common type of assistance for pilots, both in commercial and in general aviation. As synthetic vision only augments the view on objects in the outside world, there is untapped potential to extend the use of HMDs to assisting pilots with augmented reality (AR) inside of the cockpit. We present two in-cockpit AR assistance designs for in-flight emergency assistance in a simulator study with fifteen licensed pilots. The two AR assistances were designed to be sensitive to either temporal context, or to spatial and temporal context. A The simulator study revealed that the presented AR assistances proved effective for mitigating an unexpected failure. Pilots preferred the fully context-sensitive AR assistance overall, while only the AR representation with temporal context showed significantly shorter reaction times than the conventional aid. Our findings suggest that AR can be a valuable tool for assisting pilots in critical flight phases, contributing to increased safety in aviation.

This paper investigates the potential impact of deep generative models on the work of creative professionals. We argue that current generative modeling tools lack critical features that would make them useful creativity support tools, and introduce our own tool, generative.fashion1, which was designed with theoretical principles of design space exploration in mind. Through qualitative studies with fashion design apprentices, we demonstrate how generative.fashion supported both divergent and convergent thinking, and compare it with a state-of-the-art text-based interface using Stable Diffusion. In general, the apprentices preferred generative.fashion, citing the features explicitly designed to support ideation. In two follow-up studies, we provide quantitative results that support and expand on these insights. We conclude that text-only prompts in existing models restrict creative exploration, especially for novices. Our work demonstrates that interfaces which are theoretically aligned with principles of design space exploration are essential for unlocking the full creative potential of generative AI.

An intuitive way to externalize spatial memory is to sketch it. Compared to traditional paper-based sketches, virtual reality (VR) creates new opportunities to investigate the 3D aspect of spatial memory as it empowers users to express 3D information on a 3D interface directly. The goal of this study is to design a 3D sketch mapping tool for researchers and non-expert users without sketching expertise that enables externalizing memories of spatial information after some 3D-critical tasks. There exist 3D sketching tools using VR, but there are two issues with the current mid-air 3D sketching approach: (1) distortion of sketches due to depth perception errors and (2) increased cognitive and sensorimotor demands due to an increased degree of freedom and absence of physical support. To address these problems, we implemented VResin, a novel sketching interface that synergizes 3D mid-air sketching with 2D surface sketching to scaffold 3D sketching into a layer-by-layer process. An experimental study with 48 participants on multi-layer building scenarios showed that VResin supports users in creating less distorted sketches while maintaining the level of completeness and generalization compared to mid-air sketching in VR. We also demonstrate the potential applications that can benefit from 3D sketch maps and the suitability of VResin for a variety of building shapes.

The ability to consider a wide range of solutions to a design problem is a crucial skill for designers, and is a major differentiator between experts and novices. One reason for this is that novices are unaware of the full extent of the design space in which solutions are situated. To support novice designers with design space exploration, we introduce Mixplorer, a system that allows designers to take an initial design and mix it with other designs. Mixplorer differs from existing tools by supporting the exploration of ill-defined design spaces through social design space exploration. To evaluate Mixplorer, we conducted (1) an interview study with design instructors who reported that Mixplorer would “help to open the minds” of novice designers and (2) a controlled experiment with novices, finding that the design-mixing functionality of Mixplorer provided significantly better support for creativity, and that participants who mixed designs produced more novel designs.