Immersive technologies offer advantages for the visualization of and interaction with complex setups within manufacturing maintenance processes. The present work catalogs different applications of AR/VR in manufacturing maintenance practices as an extended version of a workshop paper presented at the International Workshop on eXtended Reality for Industrial and Occupational Supports (XRIOS). Through a scoping review in three computing and engineering digital libraries, we outline the key attributes of immersive solutions ( N p = 115 ) for industrial maintenance, categorizing functional prototypes with ten parameters related to interaction, visualization, and research methods. Moreover, we conducted a workshop with three manufacturing experts discussing the future of maintenance interfaces. By bringing forth their recommendations and insights, we targeted a key training challenge in maintenance. We designed and implemented a situated visualization prototype for a safety-critical procedure with real-time, in-depth, spatially relevant instructions. We compared the effects of 2D labels and 3D ghosts in a VR-simulated AR environment. In a preliminary between-subjects evaluation study ( N u = 24 ), we measured usability, workload, simulator sickness, completion time, and delayed recall. Although we did not find statistically significant differences between conditions, 3D ghosts showed slightly lower perceived workload and discomfort levels, along with shorter completion times. On the other hand, 2D labels produced higher usability. Overall, we contribute by a mapping out the state of the art and discovering knowledge gaps within immersive maintenance, presenting a design and preliminary user study that adheres to our recommendations.

While recent studies explore Large Language Models' (LLMs) performance on Theory of Mind (ToM) reasoning tasks, research on ToM abilities that require more nuanced social context is limited, such as white lies.We introduce TactfulToM, a novel English benchmark designed to evaluate LLMs' ability to understand white lies within real-life conversations and reason about prosocial motivations behind them, particularly when they are used used to spare others' feelings and maintain social harmony.Our benchmark is generated through a multi-stage human-in-the-loop pipeline where LLMs expand manually designed seed stories into conversations to maintain the information asymmetry between participants necessary for authentic white lies.We show that Tactful-ToM is challenging for state-of-the-art models, which perform substantially below humans, revealing shortcomings in their ability to fully comprehend the ToM reasoning that enables true understanding of white lies. 1

Personalized video games have the potential to provide unique and meaningful experiences for the player. User data taken from biosensors, questionnaires, or in-game performance data can infer a player’s psychological state, to which relevant game features can be adapted to enhance the player experience. This survey discusses the data types, game elements, and methods that have been used thus far to create adaptive experiences in games. The survey specifically focuses on personalized nonplayer character (NPC) companions through adaptation. Studies using performance data, affect and cognition, and self-reports to adapt companions and other NPC types are reviewed for their success in providing an enhanced experience. We then provide a motivation for a personalized companion before detailing a framework for an adaptive system that modifies companion characteristics based on the player’s state. This framework takes a human-centered approach to personalized companion design; it proposes the game elements appropriate for adaptation, the data types that suit the adaptation of the companion type, the techniques that would enable successful adaptation, and methods for companion evaluation. The framework firstly quantifies the companion’s behaviour according to recent companion design architecture. Following this, the companion’s characteristics are updated according to the player state, previous player states, evaluations of changes, and the player model. The last phase highlights how to evaluate the companion during the design stage to ensure that it is reliable in assisting the player. We suggest this as a starting point for game designers when considering how to approach a companion that aims to enhance and sustain player experience.

Understanding the interaction between cognitive load and features of video game play is important for the accurate measurement and application of this psychological construct in both research and industry scenarios to enhance the player experience. A challenge within this domain is the use of measurements developed in different areas in video games without first validating or testing the reliability of these tools. We present a holistic evaluation of methods used to measure cognitive load during naturalistic gameplay of a commercially available sandbox game. This study measures electroencephalography, electromyography, heart rate, heart rate variability, electrodermal activity, and eye blink rate from players during a building task in Minecraft whilst being assisted by a virtual companion. Various models reveal that a number of physiological measures can be used as a proxy of subjective cognitive load measurement, providing further insight into the player experience during gameplay. Our analysis also reveals some discriminant validity of the subjective measurement used. These results can help inform the choice of sensor in evaluating video game features, or when needing to accurately measure cognitive load for an adaptive situation or high-risk scenario.

This research proposes an evaluation of pitch-based sonification methods via user experiments in real-life scenarios, specifically vertical guidance, with the aim of standardizing the use of audio interfaces in AR in guidance tasks. Using literature on assistive technology for people who are blind or visually impaired, we aim to generalize their applicability to a broader population and for different use cases. We propose and test sonification methods for vertical guidance in a series of hand-navigation assessments with users without visual feedback. Including feedback from a visually impaired expert in digital accessibility, results (N=19) outlined that methods that do not rely on memorizing pitch had the most promising accuracy and self-reported workload performances. Ultimately, we argue for audio AR's ability to enhance user performance in different scenarios, from video games to finding objects in a pantry.

To promote empathy with people that have disabilities, we propose a multi-sensory interactive experience that allows sighted users to embody having a visual impairment whilst using assistive technologies. The experiment involves blindfolded sighted participants interacting with a variety of sonification methods in order to locate targets and place objects in a real kitchen environment. Prior to the tests, we enquired about the perceived benefits of increasing said empathy from the blind and visually impaired (BVI) community. To test empathy, we adapted an Empathy and Sympathy Response scale to gather sighted people's self-reported and perceived empathy with the BVI community from both sighted (N = 77) and BVI people (N = 20) respectively. We re-tested sighted people's empathy after the experiment and found that their empathetic and sympathetic responses (N = 15) significantly increased. Furthermore, survey results suggest that the BVI community believes the use of these empathy-evoking embodied experiences may lead to the development of new assistive technologies.