I denna artikel undersöks HoloLens 2 som verktyg för att förmedla LEGO-bygginstruktioner genom att använda Augmented Reality (AR). Traditionella instruktionsmetoder såsom text, bilder och video har börjat få konkurrens av AR-tekniken. AR har potentialen att förbättra inlärning och effektivisering av instruktions processen genom att lägga till digitalt innehåll i den fysiska verkligheten.  I artikeln diskuteras både fördelar och nackdelar med att använda sig av AR-instruktioner jämfört med traditionella medier, såsom pappersinstruktioner och framhäver AR’s potential inom områden som exempelvis utbildning, sjukvård och tillverkning. Tidigare studier har visat ökat engagemang, effektivitet och minskad ansträngning hos användare som använder sig av AR-instruktioner. Ibáñez m.fl. (2014) genomförde en undersökning där de använde sig av AR bland studenter och fick positiv feedback vad gäller användning av AR i ett lärandesammanhang.  Artikeln inriktar sig specifikt på användningen av AR Head Mounted Display (HMD), som i detta fall kommer vara en HoloLens 2 för att förmedla LEGO-bygginstruktioner. Med hjälp av HoloLens 2 får användaren en tydligare uppfattning om monteringsprocessen och visualisera de olika komponenterna i 3D. Detta blir fördelaktigt för undersökningen när det gäller att hantera små LEGO-komponenter för att placera dem på rätt plats.  Slutresultatet för undersökningen av att använda HoloLens 2 som verktyg för att förmedla LEGO-bygginstruktioner, visade sig ha både fördelar och nackdelar som kommer att diskuteras senare i artikeln.

Virtual reality is a technology that has seen unprecedented growth since the turn of the century with increasing applications within business, entertainment, and educational applications. As virtual reality technologies continue to develops and markets expand, the world may see an increased demand for virtual classrooms: virtual environments (VEs) that students may access through immersive virtual reality technologies to receive guided instruction, conduct simulations, or perform tasks typical in a classroom setting. While many studies document how virtual reality is beneficial to educational processes, there is little discussion on how virtual environments should be architecturally designed. Thus one may hypothesize that physical design strategies translated to virtual environments may have similar results. This thesis investigates virtual environments for education by creating several virtual classrooms embedded within a selective digital twin of the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus. The design of the virtual classrooms was influenced by current architectural trends in classroom design while capturing unique abilities present within a virtual context. A physical teaching module was also designed to create a platform for educators within the university to deliver instruction within the virtual campus.

Year after year, technologies are evolving in an incredible rapid pace, becoming faster, more complex, more accurate and more immersive. Looking back just a decade, especially interaction technologies have made a major leap. Just two years ago in 2013, after being researched for quite some time, the hype around virtual reality (VR) arouse renewed enthusiasm, finally reaching mainstream attention as the so called head-mounted displays (HMD), devices worn on the head  to grant a visual peek into the virtual world, gain more and more acceptance with the end-user. Currently, humans interact with computers in a very counter-intuitive two dimensional way. The ability to experience digital content in the humans most natural manner, by simply looking around and perceiving information from their surroundings, has the potential to be a major game changer in how we perceive and eventually interact with digital information. However, this confronts designers and developers with new challenges of how to apply these exciting technologies, supporting interaction mechanisms to naturally explore digital information in the virtual world, ultimately overcoming real world boundaries. Within the virtual world, the only limit is our imagination. This thesis investigates an approach of how to naturally interact and explore information based on open data within an immersive virtual reality environment using a head-mounted display and vision-based motion controls. For this purpose, an immersive VR application visualizing information as a network of European capital cities has been implemented, offering interaction through gesture input. The application lays a major focus on the exploration of the generated network and the consumption of the displayed information. While the conducted user interaction study with eleven participants investigated their acceptance of the developed prototype, estimating their workload and examining their explorative behaviour, the additional dialog with five experts in the form of explorative discussions provided further feedback towards the prototype’s design and concept. The results indicate the participants’ enthusiasm and excitement towards the novelty and intuitiveness of exploring information in a less traditional way than before, while challenging them with the applied interface and interaction design in a positive manner. The design and concept were also accepted through the experts, valuing the idea and implementation. They provided constructive feedback towards the visualization of the information as well as emphasising and encouraging to be even bolder, making more usage of the available 3D environment. Finally, the thesis discusses these findings and proposes recommendations for future work.

Visualisation of proposed plans and designs can be done with a number of differenttechniques within the field of architecture and urban planning. But which visualisationtechnique is best suited when presenting a design proposal at a public consultation? Is therea breaking point where the user can form a general understanding of the proposed designdepending on the degree of fidelity? To seek answers to these questions a qualitative studywas conducted where five different visualisation techniques were tested on ten users toassess their understanding of a proposed design. Our findings show that there is not asingle best visualisation technique for public consultation. Based on our results thepreferred alternative would be a combination of several techniques. We could also see thatthe general understanding of a space increased until a certain degree, and after that adeeper more detail oriented understanding was achieved.

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) think and understand social contexts primarily from a visual stand point. Feelings of being present in their social environment are a key component to their development (Strickland, Marcus, Mesibov, & Hogan, 1996). A virtual reality environment (VRE) can provide a therapeutic setting for children with ASD to learn social skills (Ehrlich & Munger, 2012). In the present research, a pilot study was used to assess the validity of a Second Life VRE developed by the researcher (Markopoulos, 2016b) by comparing the VRE to a real life film by The National Autistic Society (2016) in the United Kingdom. Feedback from the pilot study was used to make revisions to the VRE. The validated virtual reality therapy environment (VRTE) was used in the main research study. Twenty-eight Louisiana mental health practitioners’ perceptions of the VRTE were assessed using two random order conditions. Condition A required participation in the VRTE twice, first using a laptop computer only and then using the laptop with the new 2016 Oculus Rift head-mounted display (HMD, Oculus VR, LLC, 2016). Condition B required participation in the VRTE twice, first using a laptop with the new 2016 Oculus Rift HMD and then using a Laptop alone. Four out of eight subscales from the Temple Presence Inventory (TPI) (Lombard, Weinstein, & Ditton, 2011) were used to assess practitioners’ perceptions of presence in the VRTE. Results of a repeated-measures MANOVA showed that the order of the conditions were not significantly different. Additionally, participants’ TPI total and subscales scores were significantly higher when using the HMD than when using the Laptop, as well as their likelihood of using the HMD with children diagnosed with ASD than using the Laptop. All of the correlations for participants’ age and experience with technology were insignificant except for the subscale III, engagement was significant for participants’ age. Keywords: Autism spectrum disorder, therapy, virtual reality environment, head-mounted display, temple presence inventory, presence

Pilot spatial disorientation (SD) is a significant cause of incidents and fatal accidents in aviation. The pilot is susceptible to SD especially in low visibility when the visual system is deprived of information from outside the cockpit. This thesis presents the notion of visual flow displays as enhancement of symbology on flight displays primarily in low visibility for improved support of the pilot’s spatial orientation (SO) and control actions. In Studies I and II, synthetic visual flow of forward ego-motion was presented on displays and postural responses were used as measures of display effectiveness in determining SO. The visual flow significantly affected SO, and although the increased stimulation of the visual periphery from a width of 45° to about 105° increased the effects there was no further effect at a width of about 150° (Studies I and II). Studies I and II also showed that omitting 20°- or 30°-wide central fields of view from the visual flow either reduced or not reduced the effects. Further, although inconclusive, Study II may indicate that horizon symbology in central visual field may enhance the effects of peripheral visual flow. The appropriate integration of peripheral visual flow with the head-up display symbology of the Gripen aircraft was presented. Acceleration in a human centrifuge was used in Study III to investigate the effects of synthetic visual flow on the primarily vestibular-dependent somatogravic illusion of pitch-up. Two experiments revealed a reduced illusion with the visual flow. The results of Experiment 2 showed the visual flow scene not only reduced the illusion compared with a darkness condition but also compared with the visual scene without visual flow. Thus, similar to the main findings of Studies I and II, synthetic visual flow can significantly affect SO and supports the visually dependent SO system in an essential manner.

This thesis forms a valuable tool of analysis, as well as an important reference guide to anyone interested in communicating, expressing, representing, simulating and or imagining what it is like to experience psychotic phenomena. Understanding what it is like to experience psychotic phenomena is difficult. Those who have experience with it find it hard to describe, and those who do not have that experience find it hard to envision. Yet, the ability to understand is crucial to the interaction with a person struggling with psychotic experiences, and for this help is needed. In recent years, the psychosis simulation projects Mindstorm, Paved with Fear, Virtual Hallucinations and Living With Schizophrenia have been developed as teaching and awareness tools for mental health workers, police, students and family members, so that they can better understand psychotic phenomena. These multimedia projects aim to improve understanding of what a person in psychosis is going through. This thesis represents a journey into taking a closer look at their designs and comparing them to biographical and professional literature. In doing so, throughout the chapters, a set of considerations and design challenges have been created that need to be taken into account when simulating psychosis. After a series of artistic case study labyrinths, Suicide Pigeon, Intruder, and Intruder 2.0, two final ‘do-it-yourself-psychosis’ projects have been created that have taken the aspects collected into account: The Labyrinth and The Wearable. Together these two projects form experiences that may be considered analogous to psychotic experiences. My original contribution to knowledge lies, on the one hand, within the function that both The Labyrinth and The Wearable have on a person’s ability to gain a better understanding of what it feels like to be in psychosis, and on the other hand within the background information provided on the context and urgency of psychosis simulation, how the existing simulations may be improved, and how labyrinthine installation art may contribute to these improvements.

With the recent release of head-mounted displays for consumers, virtual reality experiences are more accessible than ever. However, there is still a shortage of research concerning how to design user interfaces in virtual reality for good experiences. This thesis focuses on what aspects should be considered when designing a graphical user interface in virtual reality - controlled by head orientation input - for a qualitative user experience. The research has included a heuristic evaluation, interviews, usability tests, and a survey. A virtual reality prototype of a video on demand service was investigated and served as the application for the research. Findings from the analysis of the data were application specific pragmatic and hedonic goals of the users, relevant to the subjective user experience, and current user experience problems with the prototype tested. In combination with previous recommendations, the result led to the development of seven guidelines. However, these guidelines are considered only to serve as a foundation for future research since they need to be validated. New head-mounted displays and virtual reality applications are released every day and with the increasing number of users, there will be a continuous need for more research.

Google Glass is a new personal computing device that employs an over-eyetransparent display together with voice-control in order to offer audiovisual informationto the device's users. Glass is also a new mediated-reality platform,fundamentally different from common computers and smartphones, and theavailable Glass application (Glassware) design guides do not fully cover human-computer interaction issues that are imposed by Glass' characteristics – issuessuch as optimum information density, use of colourization and positioningto separate information, optimum amount of discrete entities on display, and theuse of iconography. By combining existing guidelines for Glassware UI designwith past research on human-computer interaction and psychology, those issuescan be addressed and can lead to additional design principles. To evaluate theefficacy of such combinations within the technical and design limitations imposedby Google Glass, a set of UI mock-ups for fictional Glassware is createdand used in multiple surveys to acquire data on human response to those combinedfactors. During the study, it was determined that factors including colourization,element positioning and use of icons have a definite effect on user perceptionand preferences, whilst factors related to information density andamount of discrete entities on screen are less relevant. Additionally, supportingevidence was found in relation to the assumption that utility is more importantthan functionless aesthetics. As a result, a UI design guideline set was formulatedthat can be used to supplement existing UI design guidelines for GoogleGlass and similar over-eye transparent-screen devices.

This thesis deals wtih augmented reality applied to aircraft maintenance which is widely explored here. Furthermore, a reseach is done on the previous work done in this field. A video data-set is acquired from LET - a manufacturer of LET L-410 aircraft and an application is created in order to test possibilities of using augmented reality in aircraft maintenance. The result and proposals of the future work can be found in this thesis as well