<p>Det finns olika åsikter om prototyper av låg fidelity kan användas lika effektivt för att identifiera brister och testa ett gränssitt som en prototyp av hög fidelity. De artiklar som har granskats i detta arbete har kommit fram till olika resultat angående denna fråga. Endel forskare påstår att prototyper av låg fidelity är lämpligast att använda under den tidiga delen av designprocessen och att prototyper av hög fidelity bör användas i den senare delen av designprocessen. Detta har på senare år diskuterats krafigt inom "the human factors community" där vissa forskare påstår att prototyper av låg fidelity är minst lika användbara under hela designprocessen. De artiklar som har analyserats i denna studie har kommit fram till olika resultat angående denna fråga. Vad dessa olika resultat kan bero på analyseras i denna rapport.</p>

Esta dissertação investiga os efeitos da imersão física em jogos sérios com propósitos de aprendizado perceptivo. O principal objetivo é identificar um conjunto de orientações de design para ajudar desenvolvedores a escolher o nível apropriado de imersão a ser usado em jogos sérios a fim de assegurar que o jogo seja efetivo e confortável para os usuários. A hipótese principal é que altos níveis de imersão melhoram os resultados dos jogos sérios, mas níveis de imersão moderados também podem ser adequados com a vantagem de que causa menos mal-estar nos usuários. Nós organizamos uma revisão da literatura para melhor entender como a imersão física está sendo usada atualmente em jogos sérios, como a efetividade tem sido avaliada, e como a imersão afeta os resultados do jogo e a usabilidade. Então, nós conduzimos dois estudos de usuário empíricos para investigar os efeitos da fidelidade de display, interação e locomoção na percepção dos usuários e retenção de conhecimento. Para os experimentos, nós adaptamos um jogo sério previamente desenvolvido para análise de percepção de riscos, e desenvolvemos um novo jogo para educar trabalhadores sobre procedimentos de segurança que precisam ser seguidos durante instalações elétricas na linha de manutenção elétrica. Os resultados mostraram que, em geral, a fidelidade de display tem impacto na percepção de riscos quando procurando por riscos que não são óbvios. Alta fidelidade de display tem melhor desempenho na identificação de riscos complexos. A fidelidade de locomoção e interação não apresentou diferenças significantes no aprendizado perceptivo. Alta fidelidade também apresentou maior workload, mas nas mesmas condições a corretividade das tarefas foi maior e os participantes lembraram dos procedimentos tanto no pós-teste quanto no teste de retenção. Portanto, a retenção de conhecimento não foi afetada pelo workload introduzido pela técnica interativa. A partir destes experimentos, nós elaboramos e discutimos um conjunto de orientações de design que podem ser considerados para a escolha do nível apropriado de imersão física para ser usado no desenvolvimento de novos jogos sérios. / Nowadays, several application areas are adopting serious games as an ethical, safe and low-cost alternative to performing dangerous tasks, such as training of firefighters, and for medical surgeries. The employment of Virtual Reality in serious games helps to provide virtual environments much more realistic and better immersive experiences to the user. However, some VR systems can still cause sickness symptoms, such as nausea and headaches, and some of them can be expensive, such as CAVEs. This thesis investigates the effects of physical immersion on serious games with perceptual learning purposes. Its main goal is to identify a set of design guidelines to help developers on choosing the appropriate level of immersion to be used in serious games in order to assure it is effective and comfortable for users. The main hypothesis is that higher levels of immersion improve serious games outcomes, but moderate immersion may be also adequate with the advantage of causing less simulation sickness on users. We organized a survey of the literature to better understand how physical immersion is being currently used on serious games, how its effectiveness has been assessed, and how immersion impacts on the game outcomes and usability. Then, we conducted two empirical user studies looking for investigating the effects of the display, interaction and locomotion fidelity on users’ perception and knowledge retention. For the experiments, we adapted a serious game previously developed for risk assessment and developed a new one to educate workers in electricity-line maintenance on safety procedures that need to be followed during electric installations. Results showed that, in general, display fidelity has an effect on risk perception when searching for non-obvious risks. Higher display fidelity has better performance on complex risks identification. Interaction and locomotion fidelity did not show a significant difference in perceptual learning. Naturalness also presented higher workload, but in the same conditions the correctness of tasks was high and subjects recall the procedures in both post- and retention-test. Therefore, knowledge retention is not impacted by the workload imposed by the interactive technique. From these experiments, we elaborated and discussed a set of design guidelines that can be considered for the choice of the appropriate physical immersion to be used on the development of new serious games.

Esta dissertação investiga os efeitos da imersão física em jogos sérios com propósitos de aprendizado perceptivo. O principal objetivo é identificar um conjunto de orientações de design para ajudar desenvolvedores a escolher o nível apropriado de imersão a ser usado em jogos sérios a fim de assegurar que o jogo seja efetivo e confortável para os usuários. A hipótese principal é que altos níveis de imersão melhoram os resultados dos jogos sérios, mas níveis de imersão moderados também podem ser adequados com a vantagem de que causa menos mal-estar nos usuários. Nós organizamos uma revisão da literatura para melhor entender como a imersão física está sendo usada atualmente em jogos sérios, como a efetividade tem sido avaliada, e como a imersão afeta os resultados do jogo e a usabilidade. Então, nós conduzimos dois estudos de usuário empíricos para investigar os efeitos da fidelidade de display, interação e locomoção na percepção dos usuários e retenção de conhecimento. Para os experimentos, nós adaptamos um jogo sério previamente desenvolvido para análise de percepção de riscos, e desenvolvemos um novo jogo para educar trabalhadores sobre procedimentos de segurança que precisam ser seguidos durante instalações elétricas na linha de manutenção elétrica. Os resultados mostraram que, em geral, a fidelidade de display tem impacto na percepção de riscos quando procurando por riscos que não são óbvios. Alta fidelidade de display tem melhor desempenho na identificação de riscos complexos. A fidelidade de locomoção e interação não apresentou diferenças significantes no aprendizado perceptivo. Alta fidelidade também apresentou maior workload, mas nas mesmas condições a corretividade das tarefas foi maior e os participantes lembraram dos procedimentos tanto no pós-teste quanto no teste de retenção. Portanto, a retenção de conhecimento não foi afetada pelo workload introduzido pela técnica interativa. A partir destes experimentos, nós elaboramos e discutimos um conjunto de orientações de design que podem ser considerados para a escolha do nível apropriado de imersão física para ser usado no desenvolvimento de novos jogos sérios. / Nowadays, several application areas are adopting serious games as an ethical, safe and low-cost alternative to performing dangerous tasks, such as training of firefighters, and for medical surgeries. The employment of Virtual Reality in serious games helps to provide virtual environments much more realistic and better immersive experiences to the user. However, some VR systems can still cause sickness symptoms, such as nausea and headaches, and some of them can be expensive, such as CAVEs. This thesis investigates the effects of physical immersion on serious games with perceptual learning purposes. Its main goal is to identify a set of design guidelines to help developers on choosing the appropriate level of immersion to be used in serious games in order to assure it is effective and comfortable for users. The main hypothesis is that higher levels of immersion improve serious games outcomes, but moderate immersion may be also adequate with the advantage of causing less simulation sickness on users. We organized a survey of the literature to better understand how physical immersion is being currently used on serious games, how its effectiveness has been assessed, and how immersion impacts on the game outcomes and usability. Then, we conducted two empirical user studies looking for investigating the effects of the display, interaction and locomotion fidelity on users’ perception and knowledge retention. For the experiments, we adapted a serious game previously developed for risk assessment and developed a new one to educate workers in electricity-line maintenance on safety procedures that need to be followed during electric installations. Results showed that, in general, display fidelity has an effect on risk perception when searching for non-obvious risks. Higher display fidelity has better performance on complex risks identification. Interaction and locomotion fidelity did not show a significant difference in perceptual learning. Naturalness also presented higher workload, but in the same conditions the correctness of tasks was high and subjects recall the procedures in both post- and retention-test. Therefore, knowledge retention is not impacted by the workload imposed by the interactive technique. From these experiments, we elaborated and discussed a set of design guidelines that can be considered for the choice of the appropriate physical immersion to be used on the development of new serious games.

Det finns olika åsikter om prototyper av låg fidelity kan användas lika effektivt för att identifiera brister och testa ett gränssitt som en prototyp av hög fidelity. De artiklar som har granskats i detta arbete har kommit fram till olika resultat angående denna fråga. Endel forskare påstår att prototyper av låg fidelity är lämpligast att använda under den tidiga delen av designprocessen och att prototyper av hög fidelity bör användas i den senare delen av designprocessen. Detta har på senare år diskuterats krafigt inom "the human factors community" där vissa forskare påstår att prototyper av låg fidelity är minst lika användbara under hela designprocessen. De artiklar som har analyserats i denna studie har kommit fram till olika resultat angående denna fråga. Vad dessa olika resultat kan bero på analyseras i denna rapport.

The use of Extended Reality(XR) technologies for training is gaining popularity, and flight training is one field that has begun experimenting with the best implementation for their needs. Both Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) have been used in flight simulators, but it is unclear which is the better fit. The research question is: Which implementation (VR, MR) fits better regarding psychological and ergonomic fidelity for flight training simulation? A fidelity/validity framework is used to measure and compare VR and MR in a prototype flight training simulation. Participants from the Swedish Air Force Combat Simulation Center (FLSC) with experience in extended reality (XR) and flight training simulations took part in the study. The results showed that participants performed better and reported a preference for mixed reality (MR) over virtual reality (VR), citing factors such as ease of adaptation, movements, and concentration. The thematic analysis identified three themes: naturalness, intuitiveness, and precision. Based on these findings, MR is deemed a better fit for flight training, offering a higher level of psychological and ergonomic fidelity than VR. This study can inform future research on XR and flight training simulations and inform the incorporation of XR technologies in the design of training simulations.

In this thesis we introduce a new quantity which we call the dynamic fidelity susceptibility (DFS). We show that it is relevant to out-of-equilibrium dynamics in many-particle quantum systems, taking the problem of an impurity in a Bosonic Josephson junction, and the transverse field Ising model, as examples. Both of these systems feature quantum phase transitions in their ground states and understanding the dynamics near such critical points is currently an active area of research. In particular, sweeping a system through a quantum critical point at finite speed leads to non-adiabatic dynamics. A simple theoretical tool for describing such a scenario is the celebrated Kibble-Zurek theory which predicts that the number of excitations is related to the speed of sweep via the phase transition’s critical exponents at equilibrium. Another theoretical tool, useful in describing the static properties of quantum phase transitions, is the fidelity susceptibility. Our DFS generalizes the concept of fidelity susceptibility to nonequilibrium dynamics, reproducing its results in the static limit, whilst also displaying universal scaling properties, akin to those found in Kibble-Zurek theory, in the non-adiabatic regime. Furthermore, we show that the DFS is the same quantity as the time-dependent quantum Fisher information which provides a measure of multi-partite entanglement, as well as being closely related to out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs). / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

As technology is becoming ever more present in the world, the use of simulators as a teaching tool is more prevalent than ever, with good evidence to back up their usefulness. Drivers’ education is one area among many that is seeing this change. These types of simulators are often classified by their level of fidelity, or how alike the simulator is to reality. However, fidelity is a far from precise term with many sub-categories that different researchers treat differently. This means, along with a lack of research, that the knowledge on how fidelity affects learning in simulations is diffuse. This study aimed to investigate how specifically changing the immersive feeling of a truck simulator affected the speed of learning to reverse with a virtual truck and trailer. More immersion was achieved by constructing a crude roof and walls on the simulator mimicking the inside of a vehicle. Results showed that there was no significant increase in the learning speed. However, there was a relatively near significant difference (p=0.148) between the groups, where more immersion was linked to faster learning. Participants also judged the simulator as being more useful in their learning if experiencing the immersive setup, which could be a potential cause of the near significant difference. Because of the low sample size of 23, no definitive conclusions could be drawn from this study. Taken together, it seems that a larger study stands a good chance of revealing the effect simulator fidelity can have on learning from a relatively simple change of immersion.

The overall aim was to investigate bachelor nursing students’ experiences with simulation as a learning approach conducted under various conditions. Additionally, the aim was to translate and validate questionnaires for the evaluation of simulation in a Norwegian context. Methods: Quantitative and qualitative methods were used. Nursing students responded to three questionnaires after attending either low- or high-fidelity simulation. Data were analyzed with statistics (I). Two evaluation questionnaires were subjected to a principal components analysis (II, III). Data were obtained from nursing students through focus group interviews, and analyzed with a qualitative content analysis (IV). Main findings: Independent of the fidelity level in the simulation and educational level, the students reported satisfaction and that the emphasized features in learning were present. Those who had used a paper/pencil case study were the most satisfied (I). Debriefing was reported to be crucial for learning, but in particular by attending the large groups, also as a stressful and intrusive situation (IV).The Norwegian version of the questionnaire, the Student Satisfaction and Self-Confidence Scale, revealed no stable factor solution (II). The translated version of the Debriefing Experience Scale was shown to hold a good potential for evaluating debriefing, but benefited from reducing the subscales (III). To ensure safety and security were reported to be a prerequisite for learning, with the students requesting a more frequent use of simulation and a higher degree of familiarity with active learning in their program in general (IV). Conclusions: Simulation at all fidelity levels should be used in nursing education. To exploit the potential, the learning approaches should be integrated into the program in general through a systematic and structured building of a learning community. A further validation and testing of the questionnaires in different programs and contexts is needed.

The Eastern box turtle (Terrapene carolina carolina) is one of the most common reptiles in North America, but is soon to be threatened due to increased urbanization, disease, and the pet and food trades. In order to assist resource managers in choosing suitable sites for relocation studies, more information on the winter ecology of this species is necessary. We examined the temperature tolerance, microhabitat and degree of philopatry to hibernacula for juvenile and adult E. box turtles for two consecutive winters in Charles City Co, VA. The turtles were tracked via radio telemetry to record point locations during the active and inactive seasons. iButton data loggers were attached to each turtle to record temperature throughout winter. Vegetation data were collected and analyzed to determine if there are microhabitat differences between adult and juvenile turtles, and between occupied and random plots. Philopatry to wintering hibernacula was determined by measurements in the field and using ArcGIS. Adults had significantly higher minimum temperatures than juveniles during the first winter (P=0.027), but not during the second winter (P=0.327). Shrub and canopy cover were marginally higher for random plots than for occupied turtle hibernacula plots (P=0.066 and P=0.092, respectively); however there were no significant differences for any of the vegetation variables between adults and juveniles. Some of the turtles demonstrated site fidelity of their hibernacula. The temperature data from this study suggests that juveniles may have poorer hibernacula selection and therefore lower minimum temperatures compared with adults, but this was not seen in our second season suggesting that juvenile turtles may learn to choose better hibernacula or to dig deeper. The difference in findings for the two winters could be attributed to illness by several of the turtles the first winter, by increased maturity in the juveniles the second winter or by the significant difference in ambient temperature for the two winters (P=0.0001). Juveniles do not differ from adults in microhabitat selection, therefore resource managers may not need to plan differently for juveniles and adults in relocation studies. We also conclude that both age groups of T. c. carolina exhibit site fidelity of hibernacula.

This paper engages in finding out the level of fidelity and satisfaction of students with preventive program Unplugged in school year 2013/ 2014. Target population of this program are students of 6th and 7th grades of elementary schools and students of first and sekond year of an eight- year grammar schools which are from 12 to 14 years old. Unplugged contains 12 lessons which are realized every three weeks. The main goal of this work was to find the level of satisfaction of students with program and with lessons of this program. Other goals were to discover comprehensibility and usefulness of program. The research was made by questionnaire method. As the main result of the paper I consider finding out the level of involvement of students in lessons which they participated in and the level of entertaining of lessons. Students marked positive answers to level of involvement in 76 % of cases. And as entertaining they marked more than 74 % of lesssons. Other important results were high level of comprehensibility of instructions in lessons (over 81 %) and with instructions in workbooks which were used during the program (more then 74 % of answers). Good results were discovered also for usefulness of lessons. In a little less than 12 % of cases students choosed for usefulness of lesson grade 3 or worse....