A New Direction

Classes started one week ago, beginning my last semester as a Vanderbilt student. I am taking two classes, Topics in Software Engineering and Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Both classes are very interesting and I'm looking forward to the work that I will be doing this semester.

As I have mentioned in the past few posts I am switching the focus of my research topic from dyadic interaction to user interfaces in the virtual environment and this ties in very well with the HCI class. The class is based around helping each student develop a semester long project. The project is split into many different design phases, beginning with initial design descriptions followed by prototype developments and finally user testing. We are all encouraged to tie our project into the research that we are currently working on in other areas of our studies, so I will be using the work for this CREU project to build my HCI assignment. 

I had a meeting with Professor Bodenheimer on Friday so that we could talk about what we would like to get accomplished this semester and came up with a plan that I am very happy with. I will turning both of my previous papers into journal articles, which means expanding on the material that is presented in each one. The difference between a conference paper and a journal article is that there is usually about 30% more material in the journal article. And of course, we also discussed the work I will doing in the LIVE lab. I have mentioned that I am interested in object interaction within the virtual environment and my project will be targeted at this aspect of virtual reality. 

I want to investigate interaction with purely virtual objects. In my past research projects the objects have had virtual representations paired with physical counterparts. This meant that when my subjects were completing the object interaction task in the first paper or throwing the ball in the second paper they were actually holding the stamp tool or the ball and were therefore presented with haptic information which more than likely aided in the completion of both tasks. I mentioned in my blog post that it is not always going to be possible to provide users with physical representations of all of the objects they need to interact with, for a number of reasons, and therefore developing an intuitive way in which they can interact with the virtual objects in important. The interface that I currently have in mind is one in which the user wears a Cyberglove and must first 'touch' the virtual object and then make a fist in order to move the objects to a different location. We will be looking at how variations of the grip (making a tight fist, pointing one finger, a loose grip etc.) effects the user's feelings of ownership of the virtual object, do they believe that the object is actually there? 

I think that this project will be very interesting and that virtual reality has reached a point where this kind of project is feasible and necessary.