Abstract

Abstract
Digital technologies have become our privileged method of interacting with information. With their ubiquity, and focus on personalisation, optimisation and functionality, chance and accidental interactions in the Digital Medium are being replaced with filtered, predictable and known ones, limiting the scope of possible user experiences. In order to promote the design of richer experiences that go beyond the functionally-driven paradigm, we propose that digital systems be designed in order to favour serendipity. Through a literature-based analysis of serendipity, we explore the distinct meanings of value that are possible with serendipitous systems, offering examples of the current state of the art, observing the methods used to do so, and proposing a possible typology, while highlighting unexplored fields, experiences and interactions.

Abstract
Between 2009 and 2011, a joint academia-industry effort took place to integrate Second Life and OpenSimulator platforms into a corporate elearning provider’s learning management platform. The process involved managers and lead developers at the provider and an academic engineering research team. We performed content analysis on the documents produced in this process, seeking data on the corporate perspective of requirements for virtual world platforms to be usable in everyday practice. In this paper, we present the requirements found in the documents, and detail how they emerged and evolved throughout the process.

Abstract
Virtual meetings have become increasingly common with modern videoconference and collaborative software. While they allow obvious savings in time and resources, current technologies add unproductive layers of protocol to the flow of communication between participants, rendering the interactions far from seamless. In this work we describe in detail Remote Proxemics, an extension of proxemics aimed at bringing the syntax of co-located proximal interactions to virtual meetings. We also describe the role of Eery Space as a shared virtual locus that results from merging multiple remote areas, where meeting participants’ are located side-by-side as if they shared the same physical location. Thus rendering Remote Proxemics possible. Results from user evaluation on the proposed presence awareness techniques suggest that our approach is effective at enhancing mutual awareness between participants and sufficient to initiate proximal exchanges regardless of their geolocation, while promoting smooth interactions between local and remote people alike.

Abstract
Travel on Virtual Environments is the simple action where a user moves from a starting point A to a target point B. Choosing an incorrect type of technique could compromise the Virtual Reality experience and cause side effects such as spatial disorientation, fatigue and cybersickness. The design of effective travelling techniques demands to be as natural as possible, thus real walking techniques presents better results, despite their physical limitations. Approaches to surpass these limitations employ techniques that provide an indirect travel metaphor such as point-steering and target-based. In fact, target-based techniques evince a reduction in fatigue and cybersickness against the point-steering techniques, even though providing less control. In this paper we investigate further effects of speed and transition on target-based techniques on factors such as comfort and cybersickness using a Head-Mounted Display setup.

Abstract
Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) and similar 3D visualization devices are becoming ubiquitous. Going a step forward, HMD seethrough systems bring virtual objects to real world settings, allowing augmented reality to be used in complex engineering scenarios. Of these, optical and video see-through systems differ on how the real world is captured by the device. To provide a seamless integration of real and virtual imagery, the absolute depth and size of both virtual and real objects should match appropriately. However, these technologies are still in their early stages, each featuring different strengths and weaknesses which affect the user experience. In this work we compare optical to video see-through systems, focusing on depth perception via exocentric and egocentric methods. Our study pairs Meta Glasses, an off-the-shelf optical see-through, to a modified Oculus Rift setup with attached video-cameras, for video see-through. Results show that, with the current hardware available, the video see-through configuration provides better overall results. These experiments and our results can help interaction designers for both virtual and augmented reality conditions.