Augmented reality (AR) can aid individuals during complex, time sensitive tasks like cooking. To explore AR’s use within the kitchen we conducted an interview study (N=17) and identified time management, due to the constraints of single-device timers such as smartphones, as a challenge whilst cooking which AR could address. We conducted a user study (N=14) comparing an AR spatial timer, which allows multiple instances of timers to be positioned within a culinary environment, with a single device timer for workload perception and time management efficiency. Our results show spatial-timers can assist users by making it easier to check remaining time for specific kitchen station, and can more effectively draw attention to stations, but overall workload did not improve.

With augmented reality (AR) soon expected become part of our everyday lives there is a pertinent need to consider how it should be used within social settings. We explore individuals’ inclinations towards incorporating AR into small group social interactions across a diverse range of settings. Through six speculative design focus groups involving 21 participants, 100 ideas were generated across three scenarios: living room settings (public – sociopetal), public transport seating (semi-public – mixed proxemics), and crowded public spaces (public – sociofugal). We discuss the challenges being addressed through the proposed social AR designs, ranging from functional use cases around conveying shared information and supporting group cohesion, to addressing boredom, to facilitating shared imagination.

Rotational gain has been studied largely under active self-motion, where users control their own movement. In multiple VR scenarios, the user is under passive self-motion: their body is moved by a training simulator, a motorised chair, or a vehicle-based VR application. Users may be less sensitive to manipulation under passive motion - especially when engaged in a secondary task - meaning motion experiences could be expanded by high gains and even opposed virtual-physical motion. We identified both the perceptible and maximum comfortable thresholds of rotational gain when passively turned in a motorised chair, with and without a task, for the first time. We then applied those thresholds to an ’unbounded’ in-car VR game where the user experiences an entirely different route to their physical movement. We provide the first guidelines for creating enhanced passive motion experiences and open the design space to new applications not restricted by physical motion.

AR/VR use in-transit is increasing due to the advantages it provides over more limited mobile and seatback displays for work and play. However, despite the now common support for “travel mode” in consumer XR headsets such as the Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro, little is known about how this emergent technology has been used in-practice by passengers - from why and how they use it, to what real-world challenges they face during usage in these very public, shared contexts. To address this gap, we contribute a novel large scale analysis of Reddit posts discussing first-hand use of VR/AR in-transit. We captured 11,150 posts, producing 437 user accounts which were synthesized into themes in relation to: in-the-wild use of immersive devices, users' positive/negative sentiment about usage, challenges they faced, and social interactions and impediments that occurred. Our snapshot of the current reality of passenger XR provides real-world insight evidencing the need for more passenger-centric designs of spatial interfaces, interaction techniques, and reality awareness.

The increasing use of virtual reality (VR) in public transportation enables travelers to engage in immersive entertainment or productive tasks, thereby enhancing the overall travel experience. However, mismatched VR visual motion and physical car motion can cause motion sickness (MS), leading to nausea, postural instability and reduced time for enjoyment or productive tasks. Thus, the benefits of using VR in transportation systems are currently limited to individuals who do not experience MS. Thus, effective MS mitigation is essential for improving travel safety, maximizing travel time, and expanding VR accessibility. Neuromodulation targeting the vestibular apparatus, such as bone-conducted vibration (BCV), has shown promise in reducing MS. However, it remains unclear whether neuromodulation directly targeting vestibular cortical regions, such as transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS), is superior. This paper focuses on the design and validation of a novel vestibular cortical neuromodulation approach using tACS in mitigating MS in a novel simulated in-car VR environment. Eighty participants were recruited to evaluate the tACS approach. The results demonstrate that the proposed tACS approach effectively reduces nausea, enhances postural stability, and extends survival time in MS. Compared to BCV, tACS demonstrates a faster onset of action and longer mitigation effects. However, from an applied perspective, the effects of our tACS approach were relatively short-lived and accompanied by side effects such as tingling and itching.

To prevent motion sickness, Virtual Reality (VR) experiences for vehicle passengers typically present “matched motion”: real vehicle movements are replicated 1:1 by movements in VR. This significantly limits virtual applications. We provide foundations for in-car VR experiences that break this constraint by manipulating the passenger’s visual perception of linear velocity through amplifying and reducing the virtual speed. In two on-the-road studies, we examined the application of Vehicular Translational Gain (1.5-9.5x) and Attenuation (0.66-0.14x) to real car speeds (~50km/h) across two VR tasks (reading and gaming), exploring journey perception, impact on motion sickness, travel experience and tasks. We found that vehicular gain/attenuation can be applied without significantly increasing motion sickness. Gain was more noticeable and affected perceived speed, distance, safety, relaxation and excitement, being well-suited to gaming, while attenuation was more suitable for productivity. Our work unlocks new ways that VR applications can enhance and alter the passenger experience through novel perceptual manipulations of vehicle velocity.

Cybersickness remains a major drawback of Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, as a breadth of stationary experiences with visual self-motion can result in visually-induced motion sickness. However, not everybody experiences the same intensity or type of adverse symptoms. Here we propose that prior experience with virtual environments can predict ones degree of cybersickness. Video gaming can enhance visuospatial abilities, which in-turn relate negatively to cybersickness - meaning that consistently engaging in virtual environments can result in protective habituation effects. In a controlled stationary VR experiment, we found that 'VR-naive' video gamers experienced significantly less cybersickness in a virtual tunnel-travel task and outperformed 'VR-naive' non-video gamers on a visual attention task. These findings strongly motivate the use of non-VR games for training VR cybersickness resilience, with future research needed to further understand the mechanism(s) by which gamers become cybersickness resilient - potentially expanding access to VR for even the most susceptible participants.

The use of Virtual Reality technology in vehicles is poised to bring about a new era of transport experiences, but its use can cause or enhance motion sickness. However, with careful design, VR devices have the potential to mitigate motion sickness and provide immersive experiences while travelling. We propose a novel implicit motion cue for manipulating a virtual display presented in Virtual and Extended Reality. Our design mitigates motion sickness by providing awareness of physical orientation changes through changes in the visual orientation of the virtual planar content. We performed two experiments on a rotating chair, testing mitigation properties of different levels of rotational gain applied to the display. Our results showed that the technique significantly reduced motion sickness, without negatively affecting task performance. Our findings show that we can subtly interleave motion cues in existing spatial content like planar displays and this can contribute to lessening motion sickness experienced.

Motion sickness is a problem for many in everyday travel and will become more prevalent with the rise of automated vehicles. Virtual Reality (VR) headsets have shown significant promise in-transit, enabling passengers to engage in immersive entertainment and productivity experiences. In a controlled multi-session motion sickness study using an actuated rotating chair, we examine the potential of multi-sensory visual and auditory motion cues, presented during a VR reading task, for mitigating motion sickness. We found that visual cues are most efficient in reducing symptoms, with auditory cues showing some beneficial effects when combined with the visual. Motion sickness had negative effects on presence as well as task performance, and despite the cognitive demand and multi-sensory cues, motion sickness still reached problematic levels. Our work emphasises the need for effective mitigations and the design of stronger multi-sensory motion cues if VR is to fulfil its potential for passengers.

Virtual Reality (VR) applications commonly use the illusion of self-motion (vection) to simulate experiences such as running, driving, or flying. However, this can lead to cybersickness, which diminishes the experience of users, and can even lead to disengagement with this platform. In this paper we present a study in which we show that users performing a cognitive task while experiencing a VR rollercoaster reported reduced symptoms of cybersickness. Furthermore, we collected and analysed brain activity data from our participants during their experience using functional near infra-red spectroscopy (fNIRS): preliminary analysis suggests the possibility that this technology may be able to detect the experience of cybersickness. Together, these results can assist the creators of VR experiences, both through mitigation of cybersickness in the design process, and by better understanding the experiences of their users.

VR (Virtual Reality) Motion Sickness (VRMS) refers to purely visually-induced motion sickness. Not everyone is susceptible to VRMS, but if experienced, nausea will often lead users to withdraw from the ongoing VR applications. VRMS represents a serious challenge in the field of VR ergonomics and human factors. Like other neuro-ergonomics researchers did before, this paper considers VRMS as a brain state problem as various etiologies of VRMS support the claim that VRMS is caused by disagreement between the vestibular and visual sensory inputs. However, what sets this work apart from the existing literature is that it explores anti-VRMS brain patterns via electroencephalogram (EEG) in VRMS-resistant individuals. Based on existing datasets of a previous study, we found enhanced theta activity in the left parietal cortex in VRMS-resistant individuals (N= 10) compared to VRMS-susceptible individuals (N=10). Even though the sample size per se is not large, this finding achieved medium effect size. This finding offers new hypotheses regarding how to reduce VRMS by the enhancement of brain functions per se (e.g., via non-invasive transcranial electrostimulation techniques) without the need to redesign the existing VR content.