Correlational study on novelty factor, immersive tendencies, purchase intention and memory in immersive VR e-commerce applications.

E-commerce is a field that changed how consumers purchase and interact with products. Although, inherent limitations such as the difficulty of testing the products "first-hand" before a purchase can compromise consumers' trust in online purchases. Virtual Reality (VR) has been investigated as a tool to solve limitations in several fields and how we can harness its potential to improve the overall user experience. This study analysed how immersive VR (IVR) could solve these limitations by allowing consumers to test products beforehand. We have studied how the Novelty Factor (evaluated by the users' past VR experience) and Immersive Tendencies correlate with the users' Purchase Intention and Memory (how well they remember the product's characteristics). We have analysed a sample of 38 participants (21 males) from 18 to 28 years old. Participants experienced a refrigerator with an interactive touchscreen in an IVR setup and were guided through its functionalities. Results indicated that memory of the product's characteristics was positively correlated with how recently they experienced VR. No correlations were found in the female sample. A negative correlation between Purchase Intention and Memory of the product's characteristics was found in the male sample. We concluded that IVR applications could become helpful for both consumers and online shops in an e-commerce context regardless of the Novelty Factor and Immersive Tendencies of consumers. However, differences between genders should be further investigated.

Studying the Influence of Multisensory Stimuli on a Firefighting Training Virtual Environment.

How we perceive and experience the world around us is inherently multisensory. Most of the Virtual Reality (VR) literature is based on the senses of sight and hearing. However, there is a lot of potential for integrating additional stimuli into Virtual Environments (VEs), especially in a training context. Identifying the relevant stimuli for obtaining a virtual experience that is perceptually equivalent to a real experience will lead users to behave the same across environments, which adds substantial value for several training areas, such as firefighters. In this paper, we present an experiment aiming to assess the impact of different sensory stimuli on stress, fatigue, cybersickness, Presence and knowledge transfer of users during a firefighter training VE. The results suggested that the stimulus that significantly impacted the user's response was wearing a firefighter's uniform and combining all sensory stimuli under study: heat, weight, uniform, and mask. The results also showed that the VE did not induce cybersickness and that it was successful in the task of transferring knowledge.

ARAM: A Technology Acceptance Model to Ascertain the Behavioural Intention to Use Augmented Reality.

The expansion of augmented reality across society, its availability in mobile platforms and the novelty character it embodies by appearing in a growing number of areas, have raised new questions related to people's predisposition to use this technology in their daily life. Acceptance models, which have been updated following technological breakthroughs and society changes, are known to be great tools for predicting the intention to use a new technological system. This paper proposes a new acceptance model aiming to ascertain the intention to use augmented reality technology in heritage sites-the Augmented Reality Acceptance Model (ARAM). ARAM relies on the use of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology model (UTAUT) model's constructs, namely performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions, to which the new and adapted constructs of trust expectancy, technological innovation, computer anxiety and hedonic motivation are added. This model was validated with data gathered from 528 participants. Results confirm ARAM as a reliable tool to determine the acceptance of augmented reality technology for usage in cultural heritage sites. The direct impact of performance expectancy, facilitating conditions and hedonic motivation is validated as having a positive influence on behavioural intention. Trust expectancy and technological innovation are demonstrated to have a positive influence on performance expectancy whereas hedonic motivation is negatively influenced by effort expectancy and by computer anxiety. The research, thus, supports ARAM as a suitable model to ascertain the behavioural intention to use augmented reality in new areas of activity.

Using Heart Rate Variability for Comparing the Effectiveness of Virtual vs Real Training Environments for Firefighters.

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology to train professionals has increased over the years due to its advantages over traditional training. This paper presents a study comparing the effectiveness of a Virtual Environment (VE) and a Real Environment (RE) designed to train firefighters. To measure the effectiveness of the environments, a new method based on participants' Heart Rate Variability (HRV) was used. This method was complemented with self-reports, in the form of questionnaires, of fatigue, stress, sense of presence, and cybersickness. An additional questionnaire was used to measure and compare knowledge transfer enabled by the environments. The results from HRV analysis indicated that participants were under physiological stress in both environments, albeit with less intensity on the VE. Regarding reported fatigue and stress, the results showed that none of the environments increased such variables. The results of knowledge transfer showed that the VE obtained a significant increase while the RE obtained a positive but non-significant increase (median values, VE: before - 4 after - 7, p = .003; RE: before - 4 after - 5, p = .375). Lastly, the results of presence and cybersickness suggested that participants experienced high overall presence and no cybersickness. Considering all results, the authors conclude that the VE provided effective training but that its effectiveness was lower than that of the RE.

Do Multisensory Stimuli Benefit the Virtual Reality Experience? A Systematic Review.

The majority of virtual reality (VR) applications rely on audiovisual stimuli and do not exploit the addition of other sensory cues that could increase the potential of VR. This systematic review surveys the existing literature on multisensory VR and the impact of haptic, olfactory, and taste cues over audiovisual VR. The goal is to identify the extent to which multisensory stimuli affect the VR experience, which stimuli are used in multisensory VR, the type of VR setups used, and the application fields covered. An analysis of the 105 studies that met the eligibility criteria revealed that 84.8 percent of the studies show a positive impact of multisensory VR experiences. Haptics is the most commonly used stimulus in multisensory VR systems (86.6 percent). Non-immersive and immersive VR setups are preferred over semi-immersive setups. Regarding the application fields, a considerable part was adopted by health professionals and science and engineering professionals. We further conclude that smell and taste are still underexplored, and they can bring significant value to VR applications. More research is recommended on how to synthesize and deliver these stimuli, which still require complex and costly apparatus be integrated into the VR experience in a controlled and straightforward manner.

Hands-free interaction in immersive virtual reality: A systematic review.

Hands are the most important tool to interact with virtual environments, and they should be available to perform the most critical tasks. For example, a surgeon in VR should keep his/her hands on the instruments and be able to do secondary tasks without performing a disruptive event to the operative task. In this common scenario, one can observe that hands are not available for interaction. The goal of this systematic review is to survey the literature and identify which hands-free interfaces are used, the performed interaction tasks, what metrics are used for interface evaluation, and the results of such evaluations. From 79 studies that met the eligibility criteria, the voice is the most studied interface, followed by the eye and head gaze. Some novel interfaces were brain interfaces and face expressions. System control and selection represent most of the interaction tasks studied and most studies evaluate interfaces for usability. Despite the best interface depending on the task and study, the voice was found to be versatile and showed good results amongst the studies. More research is recommended to improve the practical use of the interfaces and to evaluate the interfaces more formally.

Impact of Different Sensory Stimuli on Presence in Credible Virtual Environments.

Multiple factors can affect presence in virtual environments, such as the number of human senses engaged in a given experience or the extent to which the virtual experience is credible. The purpose of the present work is to study how the inclusion of credible multisensory stimuli affects the sense of presence, namely, through the use of wind, passive haptics, vibration, and scent. Our sample consisted of 37 participants (27 men and 10 women) whose ages ranged from 17 to 44 years old and were mostly students. The participants were divided randomly into 3 groups: Control Scenario (visual and auditory - N = 12), Passive Haptic Scenario (visual, auditory, and passive haptic - N = 13) and Multisensory Scenario (visual, auditory, wind, passive haptic, vibration, and scent - N = 12). The results indicated a significant increase in the involvement subscale when all multisensory stimuli were delivered. We found a trend where the use of passive haptics by itself has a positive impact on presence, which should be the subject of further work.

A Context-Aware Method for Authentically Simulating Outdoors Shadows for Mobile Augmented Reality.

Visual coherence between virtual and real objects is a major issue in creating convincing augmented reality (AR) applications. To achieve this seamless integration, actual light conditions must be determined in real time to ensure that virtual objects are correctly illuminated and cast consistent shadows. In this paper, we propose a novel method to estimate daylight illumination and use this information in outdoor AR applications to render virtual objects with coherent shadows. The illumination parameters are acquired in real time from context-aware live sensor data. The method works under unprepared natural conditions. We also present a novel and rapid implementation of a state-of-the-art skylight model, from which the illumination parameters are derived. The Sun's position is calculated based on the user location and time of day, with the relative rotational differences estimated from a gyroscope, compass and accelerometer. The results illustrated that our method can generate visually credible AR scenes with consistent shadows rendered from recovered illumination.

The recognition of web pages' hyperlinks by people with intellectual disabilities: an evaluation study.

BACKGROUND: One of the most mentioned problems of web accessibility, as recognized in several different studies, is related to the difficulty regarding the perception of what is or is not clickable in a web page. In particular, a key problem is the recognition of hyperlinks by a specific group of people, namely those with intellectual disabilities. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This experiment investigated a methodology based on the direct observation, video recording, interview and data obtained by an eye tracker device. Ten participants took part in this study. They were divided into two groups and asked to perform two tasks: 'Sing a song' and 'Listen to a story' in two websites. These websites were developed to include specific details. The first website presented an image navigation menu (INM), whereas the other one showed a text navigation menu (TNM). RESULTS: There was a general improvement regarding the participants' performance when using INMs. CONCLUSION: The referred analysis indeed shows that not only did these specific participants gain a better understanding of the demanding task, but also they showed an improved perception concerning the content of the navigation menu that included hyperlinks with images.