The impact of virtual visualisation: perception and design of spaces in ethnographic projects

"The use of VR technology within education is an area that has generated great interest in recent years, so this work follows that trend and contains nuances related to user-centred design education. The objective of this work is to identify students’ perceptions of the use of VR technology for ethnographic research. A group of 20 industrial design students from Tecnologico de Monterrey conducted a field investigation, which included interviews and surveys, using HMD with videos and stereoscopic images of a public park in Monterrey, Mexico. Based on the research and information analysis, areas of opportunity were identified and urban furniture proposals for the public park that place were generated. Once the design process was completed, an evaluation instrument was applied to measure, through statistical analysis, the students' perceptions of their experience using technology in the design process; gender, qualification obtained and the relevance of the technology used was also considered."

Virtual reality poststroke rehabilitation with localization algorithm enhancement

"The work presents an analysis of the application of virtual reality technology in rehabilitation after the occurrence of stroke. The needs in poststroke therapy, as well as the requirements and technological possibilities were investigated, with the result being the creation of the application for post-stroke rehabilitation. Tests on the application, as well as analyzed studies have shown that this way of rehabilitation as an isolated therapy is not enough to improve the condition of patients. The combination of rehabilitation in a virtual and conventional manner provides a positive effect on the improvement of medical patient motor functions based on the surveyed patients."

Intelligent navigation of linked data with a graphical interface based on semantic similarity

"Semantic Web Technology proposes the use of linked data and ontologies as a mean for providing meaning to information. Even though several tools for the analysis and visualization of linked data exist, these tools require a lot of specialized knowledge to fulfill a purpose. Additionally, this complexity hardens its use for nonexperienced users therefore limiting semantic web applications. This paper describes a tool that combines the use of a recommendation system and an intuitive dynamic user interface for navigating linked data. The tool guides the user to find resources of interest by highlighting those related to his search intention. This is, the platform learns on the fly the user interest and makes recommendations based on the connections between resources."

Synergy of digital art, architecture and design using video-mapping in a combined classroom

"Technological advances within educational domains permit new teaching systems to emerge. Video-mapping is a technique that involves projecting images on threedimensional surfaces through motion effects. In the case of architectural projects, there are very few uses of videomapping that focus on urban planning and even fewer when the mapping is interactive. However, it is crucial to scale new ways of interpreting design using technologies such as video-mapping. In this research work, the themes of virtual environments, spatial representation, and basic design are combined with video-mapping. Students from the Digital Art and Architecture and the Industrial Design programs worked together in this effort, creating an architectural model made with 3D impressions; the users interacted and selected from the options of colors and textures available for the model city, generating different presentations according to the changes in the settings of the video-mapping software. Thus, this project opened the doors to welcome digital artists into the world of architecture and urbanism."

Lessons learned about language learning and extended reality frameworks

"The knowledge of a second language is an obligation in educational systems of the European Community for many years and the quality of teaching and learning, especially in Italy, could be largely improved for a better outcome. Methods like Game-based Learning and Gamification could improve and change this outcome, combined with new tools used as educational technology in an immersive context. This paper presents some lessons learned from the adoption of VR / AR within two applications related to language learning. In this context, being immersed in an engaging and fun simulated situation is a good way to practice language conversations. In the last few years the great clamor of new VR / AR devices (HMD, controller, tracker) promotes the creation of new frameworks of extended reality for language learning."

A mobile visual analytics approach for instant trend analysis in mobile contexts

"The awareness of market trends becomes relevant for a broad number of market branches, in particular the more they are challenged by the digitalization. Trend analysis solutions help business executives identifying upcoming trends early. But solid market analysis takes their time and are often not available on consulting or strategy discussions. This circumstance often leads to unproductive debates where no clear strategy, technology etc. could be identified. Therefore, we propose a mobile visual trend analysis approach that enables a quick trend analysis to identify at least the most relevant and irrelevant aspects to focus debates on the relevant options. To enable an analysis like this, the exhausting analysis on powerful workstations with large screens has to adopted to mobile devices within a mobile behavior. Our main contribution is the therefore a new approach of a mobile knowledge cockpit, which provides different analytical visualizations within and intuitive interaction design."

The concept of augmented reality application for putting alignment in golf

"Virtual and augmented reality (VR / AR) applications have successfully overcome the critical part of the Gartner curve. Investments are made and new products entering the economy. However, a very small percentage of society have also heard about AR glasses, mainly linking these with potential identity threats and personal data breaches. The authors dealt with the design of application of AR to improve golf skills by improving the putting technique. The above solution is complicated by requiring complex object recognition, tracking and advanced AR software designing."

Evacuation training using scenario-based augmented reality game

"Evacuation training is important as disaster education that covers how to survive disasters. However, traditional evacuation training does not provide realistic simulated evacuation experience (SEE). To provide the such, we developed game-based evacuation training (GBET), where trainees are required to reach a shelter in the real world within a time limit while making decisions against virtual disaster situations presented as digital contents (e.g. video and single-choice question) on GPS-enabled smartphones or tablets. However, the GBET was insufficient in the audiovisual reality. To provide a more realistic SEE, we created an evacuation training using scenario-based augmented reality (AR) game that integrates marker-based AR and scenariobased game. Although only applicable in indoor activities, the evacuation training (the extended GBET system) presents AR that expresses disaster situations (e.g. flood and fire) by superimposing threedimensional computer graphics onto the real-time view through a handheld head-mounted display."

Augmented Reality - A curatorial tool

"The flood of information in today’s society makes it difficult for undergraduate students to source quality support materials to help in their study, as many are illequipped to distinguish the good from the bad. Because of this, the lecturer’s role as curator of learning resources has developed and become a vital aspect of their job. It is no longer sufficient simply to provide reading lists. As more and more content of various levels of quality has become available online, some lecturers have taken it upon themselves to create personal websites with module content, a reading or resource list and extra materials to support their students’ learning. This paper looks at a simple approach where using AR can successfully bring online and published materials together to create a unique curatorial combination that takes support learning to a new space."