This article consists of presenting Astroroll, a Virtual Reality (VR) game in which the player assumes the role of the first wheelchairbound astronaut at the Lunar Station.This game was designed to be played only using an eye gaze to interact and a wheelchair to move, using a technique called Redirect Walk (RW).RW is a technique that aims to modify movement in VR in relation to the real world, making the path taken between the real world and the virtual world different.Using this technique correctly is possible to enlarge the virtual space and keep the gameplay in a short area in the real world.It was developed to be exhibited at Casa da Descoberta, the public science museum of the Fluminense Federal University (UFF), in the city of Niterói, in a space that demands a compact play area to accommodate all visitors.

With the popularization of virtual reality (VR) devices, there is a growing demand for new forms of interaction in immersive environments, especially in the educational context.External accessories, widely used in electronic entertainment devices, have shown promise in improving the user experience in VR.In this project, we conducted an innovative experiment in which the user uses a bicycle as an interface to explore the surfaces of celestial bodies in a space-themed virtual environment.

In information technology (IT), there is an increasing demand for professionals. However, recruiters need help hiring qualified professionals due to intense competition and a lack of information about the ones seeking employment. This work uses the Engagement by Design to reflect on a solution for hiring IT professionals focusing on crowdsourcing using engagement concepts. This study aims to identify the opportunities and challenges of using Engagement by Design to create an innovative solution for hiring an IT professional. The study made it possible to identify some items that can improve user engagement in a program aimed at recruiting and retaining IT talent.

Technology companies increasingly need to recruit and select qualified Information Technology professionals, as the technology market is fast-paced, and there is a shortage of these professionals. We used Design Thinking supported by remote communication technologies to reflect on this problem and generate solutions. In this context, we seek to answer: What are the opportunities and challenges when using Design Thinking to support the creation of an innovative solution for recruiting and selecting Information Technology professionals suitable for the market’s demands? We found that the main opportunities are to identify and integrate different profiles of professionals in the same environment in the selective process. The main challenges were contacting and recruiting participants during the COVID19 pandemic, developing solutions quickly, and applying the ideas generated in building a prototype for recruiting Information Technology professionals to meet market demand.

Urban population growth creates problems such as congestion and resource scarcity. These problems contribute to poor quality of life and negative environmental impacts. In this context, Information and Communication Technologies appear to improve sustainability solutions. Smart Mobility emerges as a dimension of the Smart City and includes technologies and applications that assist transport services. Among these services, the applications directed to the cyclist segment stand out. In our work, we present a review of bicycle applications, and we perform a comparative function analysis and their relationship with the factors that contribute to the practice of cycling filtering the most relevant functions. We aim to find the most attractive features for urban cyclists and the limitations of what is offered in the market. In addition, we will provide guidance to improve the development of cycling apps and the implementation of new features, collaborating with the development of new technologies and future research.

Virtual reality (VR) is gaining increasing popularity across various domains, but the current state of technology imposes limitations on the level of realism and complexity achievable in computer graphics when displayed through VR head-mounted devices (HMDs). To improve the user experience in HMDs, optimization techniques are needed to enhance performance without sacrificing quality. One such technique is Foveated Rendering (FR), which leverages the human visual system to optimize resource usage. FR degrades the image quality at the periphery of the human vision, where visual acuity is lower, to save resources. This paper aims to investigate if the perception of the peripheral area is affected whenever users are in movement in a VR environment. Our findings show a significant correlation between speed movement and Foveated rendering parameters in both scenarios. The least amount of degradation was observed in the idle state and the most in the high-speed state, indicating that users perceive less degradation at higher speeds. These results are particularly relevant for path-tracing-based algorithms, due to the possibility of reducing the number of rays required for the rendering whenever there is movement.

Nowadays, applications that use crowdsourcing are becoming more and more widespread. However, for the solution to be successful, it needs to go beyond usage, users must be engaged with them. User’s engagement (UE) is the quality of user experience in applications that highlights the good aspects of their interaction and failing at engage users can be crucial to a system. We have developed an 18-cards deck that provides domain-specific insights for designers on user engagement in crowdsourcing initiatives. We have applied the cards in three online design workshops, offer participants insights, findings that were lifted in the workshop, and discuss how they support to advance of the design research and design practice in crowdsourcing initiatives in the context of engagement.

Background: Over the years, several studies were conducted aiming at understanding the Technical Debt (TD) phenomenon and its implications on software development. Most of these studies focus on source code related TD types. The absence of empirical studies on usability debt motivated our research. Aims: The goal of this paper is to provide an initial usability debt characterization in software projects regarding its occurrence, type, and resolution effort. Method: We conducted a multi-case study, analyzing TD items of five software projects from four different companies. Results: We identified and classified 145 TD items in the projects. The analysis of these items allowed us to observe that the frequency of usability TD items ranged from 10.4% to 20.8% in the projects. The usability debt items cover a range of usability issues, violating eight out of the ten Nielsen usability heuristics. Regarding effort for paying the TD, usability debt items require a relatively low effort, ranging from 5.1% to 6.7% of the total TD resolution effort in the analyzed projects. Conclusions: Usability TD items are frequent, concern relevant usability issues and typically require low effort for their payment. Hence, paying this type of TD should receive high priority in TD management strategies.

Visualizing data in tables usually is not the best way to help users understanding large amounts of data. Instead, data visualization in graphical format, such as charts, has been used to explore available data. A good data visualization is defined as a well-designed presentation of interesting data, aiming to communicate ideas with clarity, precision and efficiency. Nowadays, considering the open data movement, many open data portals offer different types of data visualization. However, when browsing some of these portals, we can find many bad data visualizations, frequently ambiguous, confusing and unusable. Hence, it is essential to have an instrument capable of analyzing the quality of data visualizations, helping the designer to use the full capacity of a data visualization to provide a more efficient resource information to the users. This work aims to present an instrument that integrate a set of heuristics to assess the quality of data visualizations. Such heuristics were chosen due to have been previously proposed in several works in literature, and proved successful. To evaluate the proposed instrument, we conducted an experiment with a group composed by computer science graduate students. We analyzed the results using Cohen's Kappa and Any-two agreement statistical tests, which indicated that the instrument is adequate.

This IUI'04 workshop is an opportunity to identify and articulate the key research challenges for the design and engineering of mixed reality systems. By clarifying and systematizing these challenges, we can improve our own understanding of the current state of the field, stimulate research activity, especially collaboration, and help establish the design of MR systems as a distinct research area.