392173 Projekt "Conducting Experiments in Virtual Reality" (PjS) (SoSe 2016)

Language:
English or German, depending on participants

General Goal of the Project:
Virtual Reality is a very human‐centered technology. As a consequence, it is an important part of the
scientific procedure to evaluate what has been achieved in studies with human participants. Aspects to
be evaluated cover areas such as presence, immersion or usability. Examples are evaluations of new
interfaces for navigation, selection or manipulation or evaluations of specific applications, such as
training simulations.
Complementary to this, Virtual Reality can also provide an interesting experimental framework for
studies in basic research, as it allows the experimenter to have a high level of control of the contextual
factors. It is also more easy to reproduce experiments that have been designed for Virtual Reality. For
example, we have conducted studies on consumer preferences and choice models in a virtual
supermarket, which allowed us to re‐arrange products in shelves programmatically in no‐time. It would
have made much more effort to present participants with twenty different product arrangements in a
real‐world setup.
This project will focus on the methodological aspects of experiments in virtual reality. The participants
will

• Learn how to design, analyze, and report an experiment
• Get to know standard techniques, such as questionnaires for different aspects, such as

presence, immersion, etc.

• Make practical experiences by conducting a study in virtual reality

Experiments
Participants may choose one of a selection of experiments. Some of these experiments will be provided
by the CLFVR team and may be rooted in current research projects. In addition to that, there will be a
call for experiment proposals to which all master students of the VR course may submit their ideas to.
Procedure:
The procedure of the project is as follows:
Phase 1 (April‐May): Seminar courses on methods, with short presentations and discussions
Phase 2 (May): Design of an experiment/evaluation
Phase 3 (June): Conducting an experiment
Phase 4 (July): Evaluation and reporting
Remarks:
As a conclusion of the project, a report will be written. This report will be in
the shape of a scientific paper, which might be even submitted to a real scientific workshop, such as the
German Workshop for Virtual and Augmented Reality. Participants of the project, in particular those
following a master's program, will learn how to structure and write a scientific article. If the article is
accepted, participants will also have the chance to present their work on a real scientific workshop.
This project may lay the foundation for many interesting questions or application problems which could
be addressed in a bachelor or master thesis.
Teilnahmevoraussetzungen, notwendige Vorkenntnisse:

• Lecture on Virtual Reality OR Human‐Machine‐Interaction
• Participation in the tutorials on Virtual Reality is recommended

Requirements for participation, required level

• Lecture on Virtual Reality OR Human-Machine-Interaction
• Participation in the tutorials on Virtual Reality is recommended
• The modelling and programming knowledge required in this project will be at the level of what has been learned in the tutorials.
• A large focus of this project will be on the design and evaluation of the interaction techniques, not on programming.

Bibliography

• Virtual und Augmented Reality (VR / AR) : Grundlagen und Methoden der Virtuellen und

Augmentierten Realität / herausgegeben von Ralf Dörner, Wolfgang Broll, Paul Grimm, Bernhard
Jung, Springer Verlag, ISBN 978‐3‐642‐28903‐3

• Experimentelle Hypothesenpruefung in der Psychologie, von W. Hussy und A. Jain, Hogrefe

Verlag, ISBN 3‐8017‐1627‐9