Mental health and wellbeing have become one of the significant challenges in global society, for which emotional regulation strategies hold the potential to offer a transversal approach to addressing them. However, the persistently declining adherence of patients to therapeutic interventions, coupled with the limited applicability of current technological interventions across diverse individuals and diagnoses, underscores the need for innovative solutions. We present ARCADIA, a Mixed-Reality platform strategically co-designed with therapists to enhance emotional regulation and self-compassion. ARCADIA comprises several gamified therapeutic activities, with a strong emphasis on fostering patient motivation. Through a dual study involving therapists and mental health patients, we validate the fully functional prototype of ARCADIA. Encouraging results are observed in terms of system usability, user engagement, and therapeutic potential. These findings lead us to believe that the combination of Mixed Reality and gamified therapeutic activities could be a significant tool in the future of mental health.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642123
Virtual reality (VR) can support healthy ageing, but few devices have been trialed with frail older adults to increase physical activity. We conducted a preliminary mixed-methods implementation evaluation of an omnidirectional VR treadmill and a static VR experience with seven older adults over a six-week period in a supported living facility. Frequency of use and pre-post physical functioning measures were collected, mainly to establish technology suitability based on person characteristics. Diary entries following technology use, resident focus group and staff interview revealed technology acceptance and perceived potential for increasing physical activity, health and wellbeing through accessing virtual environments, which motivated continued activity. Results demonstrated technology suitability for a range of older adults with various mobility and physical impairments. However, residents noted interest in a seated treadmill for physical activity without perceived risks of falls with standing treadmills. Staff raised considerations around care home implementations including usability, cost and space.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642281
Simulating accurate weight forces in Virtual Reality (VR) is an unsolved challenge. Therefore, providing real weight sensations by transferring liquid mass has emerged as a promising approach. However, key objectives conceptually interfere with each other. In particular, previous designs that support a high range of weight or high flow rate lack mobility. In this work, we present MobileGravity, a system, that decouples the weight-changing object from the liquid supply and the pump. It enables weight changes of up to 1 kg at a rate of 235 g/s and allows the user to walk around freely. Through a study with 30 participants, we show that the system enables users to perceive the weight of different virtual objects and enhances realism, as well as enjoyment.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642658
Teleportation is a popular method of navigation in virtual reality (VR) because it does not induce symptoms of VR sickness, such as nausea and disorientation. However, teleportation may reduce spatial awareness, causing users to miss important aspects of their surroundings. We present ACTIVE, a novel approach to teleportation that uses techniques from cinematography to enhance the user experience of navigation in VR. ACTIVE adapts heuristics from continuity editing to dynamically reposition and reorient the camera after teleportation. This approach aims to improve the aesthetic quality of entities and environmental features while respecting users' intended trajectory through the virtual environment. In a user study, we found that even though ACTIVE did not improve users' recall of which entities were present in the environment, it increased engagement by significantly improving aesthetic appeal. Lastly, despite removing some agency from users, ACTIVE had no impact on presence or VR sickness compared to teleportation.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642412
To enhance interactions in VR, many techniques introduce offsets between the virtual and real-world position of users’ hands. Nevertheless, such hand redirection (HR) techniques are only effective as long as they go unnoticed by users—not disrupting the VR experience. While several studies consider how much unnoticeable redirection can be applied, these focus on mid-air floating hands that are disconnected from users’ bodies. Increasingly, VR avatars are embodied as being directly connected with the user’s body, which provide more visual cue anchoring, and may therefore reduce the unnoticeable redirection threshold. In this work, we studied more complete avatars and their effect on the sense of embodiment and the detectability of HR. We found that higher avatar completeness increases embodiment, and we provide evidence for the absence of practically relevant effects on the detectability of HR.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641933
Presence is a defining element of virtual reality (VR), but it is also increasingly used when assessing mixed reality (MR) experiences. The increased interest in measuring presence in MR and recent works underpinning the specific nature of presence in MR raise the question of the current state and practice of assessing presence in MR. To address this question, we present an analysis of more than 320 studies that report on presence measurements in MR. Our analysis showed that questionnaires are the dominant measurement but also identify problematic trends that stem from the lack of a generally agreed-upon concept or measurement for presence in MR. More specifically, we show that using measurements that are not validated in MR or custom questionnaires limiting the comparability of results is commonplace and could contribute to a looming replication crisis in an increasingly relevant field.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642383
A Mixed Reality (MR) system encompasses various aspects, such as visualization and spatial registration of user interface elements, user interactions and interaction feedback. Image-schematic metaphors (ISMs) are universal knowledge structures shared by a wide range of users. They hold a theoretical promise of facilitating greater ease of learning and use for interactive systems without costly adaptations. This paper investigates whether image-schematic metaphors (ISMs) can improve user learning, by comparing an existing MR instruction authoring system with or without ISM enhancements. In a user study with 32 participants, we found that the ISM-enhanced system significantly improved task performance, learnability and mental efficiency compared to the baseline. Participants also rated the ISM-enhanced system significantly higher in terms of perspicuity, efficiency, and novelty. These results empirically demonstrate multiple benefits of ISMs when integrated into the design of this MR system and encourage further studies to explore the wider applicability of ISMs in user interface design.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642925
The rise of multitasking in contemporary lifestyles has positioned audio-first content as an essential medium for information consumption. We present AudioXtend, an approach to augment audiobook experiences during daily tasks by integrating glanceable, AI-generated visuals through optical see-through head-mounted displays (OHMDs). Our initial study showed that these visual augmentations not only preserved users' primary task efficiency but also dramatically enhanced immediate auditory content recall by 33.3% and 7-day recall by 32.7%, alongside a marked improvement in narrative engagement. Through participatory design workshops involving digital arts designers, we crafted a set of design principles for visual augmentations that are attuned to the requirements of multitaskers. Finally, a 3-day take-home field study further revealed new insights for everyday use, underscoring the potential of assisted reality (aR) to enhance heads-up listening and incidental learning experiences.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642514