| Beschreibung |
Collaborative activities such as dancing, singing, and movement games, which are based on synchronized interpersonal interaction have the potential to evoke feelings of togetherness and strengthen social bonds. Engaging in such activities with friends and family living far away from each other continues to be difficult, even in Virtual Reality (VR). One of the main difficulties for synchronised activities in VR is latency effects, which disrupt the experience of synchronous movement and often result in a poor user experience. Instead of togetherness, people feel disconnected and “out of sync”. The phenomenon of falling into the same rhythm over time while interacting with another person has been extensively investigated and is referred to as “entrainment”. This process typically occurs unconsciously, leading to coordinated movements that enhance feelings of sympathy, intimacy, and closeness. Social Virtual Reality (SVR) enables users to engage in shared activities, and thus being closer to real-life encounters but current VR environments and applications do not adequately support collaborative activities that rely on temporal synchronization. In this project, we will utilise different prototyping and development approaches to investigate what kind of interaction techniques can be applied to enhance entrainment in VR and how the feeling of shared synchronous experiences can be increased. For this purpose, we would like to investigate whether the effect of entrainment applies for SVR the same way as it does in reality and want to identify components that inhibit or promote entrainment in such designs e.g. how different feedback and environmental modalities can support perceived synchrony within movement based interactions. Step by step, we will identify difficulties during social interactions in latency affected environments and develop concepts to foster a shared sense of synchrony, which will then be implemented in Unity. To evaluate the implemented methods, we will employ qualitative methods alongside eye-tracking measurements e.g. to identify attention shifts or breaks in presence. This course is ideal for students who enjoy working individually and in multidisciplinary teams, who can identify challenges and problems, and take initiative in developing innovative solutions. We encourage students to participate that have a high interest in working from theory, coming up with speculative concepts, and learning how to realise those concepts as an artefact. |
| Voraussetzungen |
Interest in interaction design and different types of prototyping.
Or
Solid programming / scripting experience (C#, C++, Python o.Ä.).
Experience in Unity and/or with VR recommended.
All participants should enjoy working in an interdisciplinary group, want to be creative, build prototypes, and be able to converse in English. |
