Inclusive Design of Immersive Content

Lead Research Organisation: University of Cambridge
Department Name: Engineering

Abstract

Abstracts are not currently available in GtR for all funded research. This is normally because the abstract was not required at the time of proposal submission, but may be because it included sensitive information such as personal details.

Publications

10 25 50
 
Description We have written one complete manuscript that reviews and synthesises the literature around supporting virtual and augemented reality content consumption and presents emerging design principles and a vision we call "Inclusive Immersion". It is currently under final review for the journal Virtual Reality.

We have submitted a manuscript based on a survey with 100 respondents with disabilities where we research obstacles and barriers for inclusion when consuming virtual and augemented reality content. A key result here is that most respondents face significant barriers to access such content. This submission is still under review.

In adition, we have developed novel means of synthetically generating user data using generative adverserial networks (GANs), which we have demonstrated in two publications (IEEE FG 2021 and IEEE ISMAR 2021). We have further developed a reinforcement learning agent that have learned to simulate a user typing using two index fingers on a mid-air keyboard, generating data that approximates actual user data to a high a degree. Such models will make it easier to construct Inclusive Immersion models later in this project.
Exploitation Route On-going analysis of barriers to inclusion can be used issue design guidelines for industry to improve accessibility and possibly be used as background material for legislation and/or further regulation in this area. New ways of synthesising user data for augmented reality headset interactions.
Sectors Creative Economy,Digital/Communication/Information Technologies (including Software)

 
Description Towards an Equitable Social VR
Amount £387,187 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/W02456X/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 06/2022 
End 06/2025
 
Title Mechanical Turk Accessibility (CHI 2021) Dataset 
Description Includes dataset of two surveys and an interview for a study to understand accessibility and human factors issues in online crowd work. Participants responded to the surveys through Amazon Mechanical Turk and provided information on demographics as well as how they engage in online work on the platform. The dataset contains data from the two surveys and an interview (can be viewed on the different tabs). Garbage data has been removed from the dataset (in survey 2). The publication that emerged from analysing the dataset can be found at https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445291 (in press) 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact None known. 
URL https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/316069
 
Title Research data supporting "Crowdsourcing Design Guidance for Contextual Adaptation of Text Content in Augmented Reality" 
Description Participant data corresponding to experiments described in "Crowdsourcing Design Guidance for Contextual Adaptation of Text Content in Augmented Reality". The INDEX tab in the attached xlsx datasheet contains a detailed description of the dataset and glossary of terms. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact None known. 
URL https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/321453
 
Title Research data supporting "Gesture Knitter: A Hand Gesture Design Tool for Head-Mounted Mixed Reality Applications" 
Description Data corresponding to experiments described in "Gesture Knitter: A Hand Gesture Design Tool for Head-Mounted Mixed Reality Applications". The zipped folder participant_data.zip contains the raw hand tracking files for each of the eight participants. This includes the fine primitive gesture (for both hands), the gross gestures (right and left hands), the one-handed and two-handed complex gestures, the continuous online recognition data for one-handed and two-handed gestures, as well as the designed primitive and complex gesture if that individual participated in Study 2, the design study. The raw data includes the x, y, z coordinates and the quaternions qx, qy, qz, and qw for each of the time series steps of the hand trajectory. The tracked elements are as follows: cam -> camera palm -> plm wrist -> wrs thumb -> th index -> in middle -> mi ring -> ri pinky -> pi The character "r" or "l" joined to the end of any of the above abbreviations denotes the right and left hands respectively. CHI2021_Gesture_Knitter_supporting_data.xlsx contains the processed data derived from the raw data. It represents the recognition rates for each of the cases examined in our recognition experiments - training with all the primitive data, cross-validation results, as well as the recognition results from the synthetic data generation. The user study questionnaire sheet shows the user responses to the post-study questionnaire conducted in the design study. The decoding text files (decoding_one_hand.txt, decoding_two_hand.txt, and online_recognition.txt) contain the output of the decoder when fed the various complex gesture traces. The number at the end of each decoding output is the edit distance to the correct declaration. The online results show the output of the online recognition experiment with gestures that are misclassified, false activations, or failure to recognize a gesture within that time frame. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact None known. 
URL https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/321454
 
Title Research data supporting "Understanding, Detecting and Mitigating the Effects of Coactivations in Ten-Finger Mid-Air Typing in Virtual Reality" 
Description Coactivation data corresponding to the analysis presented in "Understanding, Detecting and Mitigating the Effects of Coactivations in Ten-Finger Mid-Air Typing in Virtual Reality." The attached datasheet contains two tabs: TOUCH EVENT DATA and LAYOUT DATA. TOUCH EVENT DATA details the touch events and their attributes. Feature values are provided for participants 1 to 12. Detailed definitions of these features are provided in the associated publication. LAYOUT DATA details the distribution of touch events and coactivations over the keyboard layout. 
Type Of Material Database/Collection of data 
Year Produced 2021 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact None known. 
URL https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/321455