Virtual Field Studies: Conducting Studies on Public Displays in Virtual Reality

Mäkelä, V., Rivu, S. R. R., Alsherif, S., Khamis, M. , Xiao, C., Borchert, L. M., Schmidt, A. and Alt, F. (2020) Virtual Field Studies: Conducting Studies on Public Displays in Virtual Reality. In: 2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20), Honolulu, HI, USA, 25-30 Apr 2020, ISBN 9781450367080 (doi: 10.1145/3313831.3376796)

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Publisher's URL: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3313831.3376796

Abstract

Field studies on public displays can be difficult, expensive, and time-consuming. We investigate the feasibility of using virtual reality (VR) as a test-bed to evaluate deployments of public displays. Specifically, we investigate whether results from virtual field studies, conducted in a virtual public space, would match the results from a corresponding real-world setting. We report on two empirical user studies where we compared audience behavior around a virtual public display in the virtual world to audience behavior around a real public display. We found that virtual field studies can be a powerful research tool, as in both studies we observed largely similar behavior between the settings. We discuss the opportunities, challenges, and limitations of using virtual reality to conduct field studies, and provide lessons learned from our work that can help researchers decide whether to employ VR in their research and what factors to account for if doing so.

Item Type:Conference Proceedings
Status:Published
Refereed:Yes
Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID:Khamis, Dr Mohamed
Authors: Mäkelä, V., Rivu, S. R. R., Alsherif, S., Khamis, M., Xiao, C., Borchert, L. M., Schmidt, A., and Alt, F.
College/School:College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
Publisher:ACM
ISBN:9781450367080
Copyright Holders:Copyright © 2020 held by the owner/author(s)
Publisher Policy:Reproduced in accordance with the publisher copyright policy
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Project CodeAward NoProject NamePrincipal InvestigatorFunder's NameFunder RefLead Dept
309501RSE EnterpriseMohamed KhamisThe Royal Society of Edinburgh (ROYSOCED)65040Computing Science