The field of virtual reality (VR) is getting increasing attention from the scientific community and it is being portrayed by advertisements as the user interface (UI) of the future. This is a fair statement since the prior uses of VR that used to exist only in fiction movies and books are now widely available in many forms and settings to the public. One of the most interesting outcomes from this technological evolution is that now VR can be experienced through the use of a mobile phone and the addition of some inexpensive means typically in a form of a headset. The combination of the phone’s screen as attached to the headset creates a form of Head Mounted Display (HMD) which can be utilized in order for the user to be immersed within a virtual environment (VE). The argument here is that even if the means to get access to VR are cheap, this should not be the case with the experience as well. On the contrary, the low entry requirements in combination with a high quality experience are the basis for the medium's success and further adoption by the users. More specifically, the capability of utilizing a three dimensional space (3D) should not limit the medium’s use on just that but instead, this space should be used in order to offer immersive environments which make the user feel as if he is there.    There are many factors that contribute to that result and significant progress has been made to some such as the quality of screen or other hardware parts that allow the user get immersed into the virtual scenery, however, little progress has been made towards the conceptual means that allow the user of better experiencing this VE. Most of the VR applications so far are specifically designed for a single user session. This creates an isolation of the user from any other type of communities which further increases the stigma of VR being a solitary experience. Another issue is the interaction method that is available to users in order to interact with the VE. The use of buttons in most of the available headsets is a counter intuitive method for a person to interact with an environment that wants to be called real. The technological advancements in the field of image processing have resulted in many new methods of interaction and multimodal manipulation within VE and it would be worthy of exploring their effects on the user experience (UX) when used as an interaction method.    For these reasons, this thesis used the case of VR games as a setting to study how UX can be enhanced from its current state by introducing a bare hand gesture interaction method and expanding the VR setting in order to host two users in shared VE. Two individual studies were conducted where user feedback was collected in order to describe the effects of this approach in both a qualitative and quantitative manner. As results indicate, by utilizing gesture analysis on a headset equipped with a smartphone, it is possible to offer a natural and engaging solution for VR interaction capable of rich UXs while maintaining a low entry level for the end users. Finally, the addition of another player significantly affected the experience by influencing the emotional state of the participants in the game and further enforcing their feeling of presence within the VE.

Virtuell verklighet (VR) har börjat användas i större utsträckning av människor inomområden som utbildning och underhållning. För att VR ska uppfattas som en seriösplattform för att skapa utbildnings- och underhållningstjänster, är en känsla avimmersion en viktig del av användarupplevelsen. Det finns idag olika metoder för attinteragera med VR men de saknar upplevelsen av att vara naturliga och realistiska.Handinteraktion anses vara ett naturligt sätt för människor att interagera med VR och harförutsättningar för att stödja immersion. Trots att handinteraktion anses vara ett bra sättatt interagera med VR finns det idag inga riktlinjer som underlättar för att designa tjänstermed handinteraktion. För att undersöka hur handinteraktion kan designas för att stödjaimmersion i VR, har vi utgått från frågan:Hur kan handinteraktion designas för virtuell verklighet för att stödja immersion?Genom vår studie har vi identifierat aspekter som är viktiga för att handinteraktion skastödja immersion. Frågan studeras genom en designorienterad ansats med kvalitativadatainsamlingsmetoder som deltagartester, intervjuer och observationer. Testdeltagarnasom deltagit i studien är rekryterade baserat på deras tidigare erfarenheter av VR ochspel. Studien bidrar med kunskap om vad som är viktigt för att handinteraktion skauppfattas som naturligt och realistiskt för att stödja immersion när det används i VR. / Virtual reality (VR) is becoming more commonly used by people in areas like educationand entertainment. However, for VR to be a serious platform for creating education andentertainment services, the sense of immersion is an important part of the userexperience. Today there are several methods to interact with VR, but they often lack thefeeling of being natural and realistic. Hand interaction is seen as a natural way for peopleto interact with VR and has potential to create immersion. However, even though handinteraction is seen to be a natural way of interacting with VR there’s no guidelinesavailable to facilitate the design of VR-services with hand interaction. To study how handinteraction can be designed to support immersion in VR, we’ve asked the question:“How can hand interaction be designed for virtual reality to support immersion?”Through our study, we have identified aspects that are important for hand interaction tobe able to support immersion. The question has been studied through a design orientedapproach with qualitative data gathering methods such as participant test, interviews andobservations. The test participants were recruited based on their previous experience ofVR and games. The study contributes with knowledge regarding what is important for

In this work, I present empirically validated techniques to realize gesture and touch interaction using a novel near touch tracking system. This study focuses on identifying the intended center of action for grab and release gestures close to an interactive surface. Results of this experiment inform a linear model that can approximate the intended location of grab and release actions with an accuracy of R^2 = 0.95 for horizontal position and R^2 = 0.84 for vertical position. I also present an approach for distinguishing which hand was used to perform the interaction. These empirical model data and near touch tracking system contributions provide new opportunities for natural and intuitive hand interactions with computing surfaces. / Graduate

The dissemination of new innovative technology requires feasibility and simplicity. The problem with marker-based augmented reality is similar to glove-based hand gesture recognition: they both require an additional component to function. This thesis investigates the possibility of combining markerless augmented reality together with appearance-based hand gesture recognition by implementing a game with good user experience. The methods employed in this research consist of a game implementation and a pre-study meant for measuring interactive accuracy and precision, and for deciding upon which gestures should be utilized in the game. A test environment was realized in Unity using ARKit and Manomotion SDK. Similarly, the implementation of the game used the same development tools. However, Blender was used for creating the 3D models. The results from 15 testers showed that the pinching gesture was the most favorable one. The game was evaluated with a System Usability Scale (SUS) and received a score of 70.77 among 12 game testers, which indicates that the augmented reality game, which interaction method is solely based on bare-hands, can be quite enjoyable.