Shadows of Tomorrow is an innovative public art installation utilizing LiDAR body tracking and augmented reality to promote climate change awareness. The installation projects depictions of real-world climate change scenarios from Australia, Kuwait, the United States, and Greenland on a large display. Shadows utilizes the Azure Kinect to capture and integrate audience member silhouettes as a simple user interface for the display. As audiences move in front of the display, their silhouette reveals the impact of climate change on the projected environment. By bringing global climate change stories to local audiences, we emphasize the universal, yet highly localized impacts of climate crisis. These interactive visualizations encourage audiences to engage with and understand the stark realities of climate change in regions far removed from their own. Created for display in high-transit public areas like museums, airports, and city centers, Shadows of Tomorrow aims to create a global dialogue around our shared responsibility for climate action.

The online community plays a pivotal role in the transgender community. To better understand how gender-diverse youth equip online communities during their critical stage of gender identity development, we collected online postings from TrevorSpace, one of the most active forums among gender-diverse youth in the US. While existing HCI research largely focuses on the connectedness and social aspects of online communities, our findings illustrate how trans children use online communities to explore and navigate their gender identity. The thematic analysis reveals two conflicting ideas during this exploration, a desire to figure out whether their gender identity could be defined as trans, yet not to be defined through categorical classification of trans. More specifically, we found that 1) trans youth use the community to understand the changes happening in their gender identity by sharing their experience; 2) and these experiences vary for individuals in regards to the intensity of gender dysphoria and their coping mechanisms; 3) yet, the debate centers around the meaning of trans—for example, whether gender diverse youth should experience dysphoria or physically transition to be considered trans; 4) the growing impact of trans social influencers, particularly trans Youtubers, is pointed out as one of the sources that ignite the debate surrounding the categorical classification defining trans. Altogether, our findings point to the importance of acknowledging the spectrum of the trans experience to design a more inclusive digital platform for gender-diverse youth.

3D animation is becoming a popular form of storytelling in many fields, bringing life to games, films, and advertising. However, the complexity of conventional 3D animation software poses steep learning curves for novices. Our work aims to lower such barriers by creating a simple yet immersive interface that users can easily interact with. Based on the focus-group interviews, we identified key functionalities in animation workflows. The resulting tool, SpArc, is designed for two-handed setups and allows users to dive into animating without complex rigging and skinning process or learning multiple menu interactions. Instead of using a conventional horizontal slider, we designed a radial time slider to reduce possible arm fatigue and enhance the accuracy of keyframe selection. The demo will showcase this interactive 3D animation tool.

The rise of online learning poses unique challenges in music education, where live demonstration and musical synchronization are critical for student success. We present HoloKeys, a music education interface which allows instructors to play remotely located pianos using an augmented reality headset and wifi-enabled microcontrollers. This approach allows students to receive distance education which is more direct, immersive, and comprehensive than conventional video conferencing allows for. HoloKeys enables remote students to observe live instructional demonstration on a physical keyboard in their immediate environment just as they would in traditional settings. HoloKeys consists of two separate components: an augmented reality user interface and a piano playing apparatus. Our system aims to extend online music education beyond desktop platforms into the physical world, thereby addressing crucial obstacles encountered by educators and students transitioning into online education.

Using one’s hands can be a natural and intuitive method for interacting with 3D objects in a mixed reality environment. This study explores three hand-interaction techniques, including the gaze and pinch, touch and grab, and worlds-in-miniature interaction for selecting and moving virtual furniture in the 3D scene. Overall, a comparative analysis reveals that the worlds-in-miniature provided the best usability and task performance than other studied techniques. We also conducted in-depth interviews and analyzed participants’ hand gestures in order to identify desired attributes for 3D hand interaction design. Findings from interviews suggest that, when it comes to enjoyment and discoverability, users prefer directly manipulating the virtual furniture to interacting with objects remotely or using in-direct interactions such as gaze. Another insight this study provides is the critical roles of the virtual object’s visual appearance in designing natural hand interaction. Gesture analysis reveals that shapes of furniture, as well as its perceived features such as weight, largely determined the participant’s instinctive form of hand interaction (i.e., lift, grab, push). Based on these findings, we present design suggestions that can aid 3D interaction designers to develop a natural and intuitive hand interaction for mixed reality.

The medium of virtual reality enables new opportunities for the experience products and shopping environment that may combine best features of both physical and digital market place. As little is known on how best to create virtual reality marketplace, the current research aims to explore required features for VR market user interface and its impact on shopping behavior. As a first step toward endeavor, we will empirically test three different user interfaces; 2D interface style, 3D skeuomorphic interface style and interface that combines features of both 2D and 3D interaction techniques.