VR devices have recently been actively promoted as tools for knowledge workers and prior work has demonstrated that VR can support some knowledge worker tasks. However, only a few studies have explored the effects of prolonged use of VR such as a study observing 16 participants working in VR and a physical environment for one work-week each and reporting mainly on subjective feedback. As a nuanced understanding of participants' behavior in VR and how it evolves over time is still missing, we report on the results from an analysis of 559 hours of video material obtained in this prior study. Among other findings, we report that (1) the frequency of actions related to adjusting the headset reduced by 46% and the frequency of actions related to supporting the headset reduced by 42% over the five days; (2) the HMD was removed 31% less frequently over the five days but for 41% longer periods; (3) wearing an HMD is disruptive to normal patterns of eating and drinking, but not to social interactions, such as talking. The combined findings in this work demonstrate the value of long-term studies of deployed VR systems and can be used to inform the design of better, more ergonomic VR systems as tools for knowledge workers.

Learning and practicing table tennis with traditional methods is a long, tedious process and may even lead to the internalization of incorrect techniques if not supervised by a coach. To overcome these issues, the presented study proposes an exergame with the aim of enhancing young female novice players’ performance by boosting muscle memory, making practice more interesting, and decreasing the probability of faulty training. Specifically, we propose an exergame based on skeleton tracking and a virtual avatar to support correct shadow practice to learn forehand drive technique without the presence of a coach. We recruited 44 schoolgirls aged between 8 and 12 years without a background in playing table tennis and divided them into control and experimental groups. We examined their stroke skills (via the Mott-Lockhart test) and the error coefficient of their forehand drives (using a ball machine) in the pre-test, post-test, and follow-up tests (10 days after the post-test). Our results showed that the experimental group had progress in the short and long term, while the control group had an improvement only in the short term. Further, the scale of improvement in the experimental group was significantly higher than in the control group. Given that the early stages of learning, particularly in girls children, are important in the internalization of individual skills in would-be athletes, this method could support promoting correct training for young females.