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Body doubling is a mechanism that lets individuals work alongside someone on a monotonous task that they might not be able to focus on when they work alone. The person they work alongside is called a body double. It could be considered similar to co-working, but it gives individuals the freedom to work on anything that they want without feeling obligated to interact with the other person. This research aims to understand if body doubling is helpful to the users and how mixed reality body doubling can be a better addition to the existing mode of in-person and video-call based body doubling. In this work, we have recruited 40 participants to perform a user study where we have done a between-groups comparative study between a no body-double, in-person body double, a video-call based body double, and a mixed reality body double modes. Through these studies, we try to analyze if body doubling is helpful, and if so, which mode the participants are more inclined towards. The work also presents a few suggestions for future improvements. / Master of Science / Body Doubling, defined here, is in the context of a productivity strategy where a person is present beside an individual when they are working. This way, when the individual is working on a monotonous task, a person beside them would make them motivated to focus again. The person helping in body-doubling is called a ``Body Double''. This uses the concept of accountability that is felt in the presence of someone. Even though it seems similar to widely popular co-working, where job professionals share an office space to work together, in body-doubling, there is no interaction with the body-double, and in most cases, the two individuals might not be working on the same task. This research aims to understand if body doubling is helpful to users. In this work, we have recruited 40 participants to perform a user study where we have done a between-groups comparative study between a no body-double, in-person body double, a video-call based body double, and a mixed reality body double modes. It tries to show how mixed reality body doubling can be a better addition to the existing mode of in-person and video-call based body doubling. Through the user studies, we try to analyze if body doubling is helpful, and if so, which mode are the participants more inclined towards. The work also presents a few suggestions for future improvements.

Spatial referencing denotes the act of referring to a location or an object in space. Since it is often essential in different collaborative activities, good support for spatial referencing could lead to exceptional collaborative experience and performance. Augmented Reality (AR) aims to enhance daily activities and tasks in the real world, including various collaborations and social interactions. Good support for accurate and rapid spatial referencing in collaborative AR often requires detailed environment 3D information, which can be critical for the system to acquire as constrained by current technology. This dissertation seeks to address the issues related to spatial referencing in collaborative AR through 3D user interface design and different experiments. Specifically, we start with investigating the impact of poor spatial referencing on close-range, co-located AR collaborations. Next, we propose and evaluate different pointing ray techniques for object reference at a distance without knowledge from the physical environment. We further introduce marking techniques aiming to accurately acquire the position of an arbitrary point in 3D space that can be used for spatial referencing. Last, we provide a systematic assessment of an AR collaborative application that supports efficient spatial referencing in remote learning to demonstrate its benefit. Overall, the dissertation provides empirical evidence of spatial referencing challenges and benefits to collaborative AR and solutions to support adequate spatial referencing when model information from the environment is missing. / Doctor of Philosophy / People often exchange spatial information about objects when they work together. Example phrases include: ``put that there'', or ``pick the third object from left''. On the other hand, Augmented Reality (AR) is the technology that displays 3D information into the real world to enhance or augment reality. Scientists and technology practitioners think that AR can help people collaborate in a better way. The AR system needs to have a good understanding of the physical environment to support exchanging spatial information in the first place. However, limited by current technology, acquiring spatial information from the real world is not always possible or reliable. In this dissertation, we first illustrate the severity of insufficient environmental knowledge when collaborators sit next to each other in AR. Then we present pointing ray techniques to help AR collaborators refer to distant objects without knowing where those objects are. We further explore different marking techniques that can help the AR system calculate the position of a point in space without scanning the area. Last, we provide an AR application that supports efficient spatial information communication in remote discussion around physical objects.

Phenomenal Things is a comical look into the daily lives of Internet of Things (IoT) artifacts and their experiences as social beings in cyberspace. This Augmented Reality (AR) experience presents a storyworld set in the digital realm where the digital personas of IoT artifacts are engaged in activities normally invisible to humans such as information extraction, learning, talking to each other and communicating with other "things" online. By wearing a head- worn display (HWD), users will encounter anthropomorphized IoT artifacts going about their daily lives and come to understand these characters as digital beings with social lives. Placed inside of cyberspace, participants will find themselves within a circle of anthropomorphized IoT devices in dialogue with one another, as they welcome a new light bulb to their network. As participants move about the AR actors, proximity to each character will cause the participant to "friend" that character. "Friending" in this case means to get close to and influence the version of the story being told by changing the social network of the character. With this work I intend to create a mesmerizing yet subtly-interactive experience using proxemics to create an interactive narrative where participants can create emotional bonds with the AR actors in this immersive theater experiment. / Master of Fine Arts / What is everyday life like for the billions of interconnected sensors and devices that make up the network known as the Internet of Things (IoT)? Many people struggle to accurately describe what the IoT is, so it is likely most of us are unaware what specifically these "smart" devices are doing while continuously completing their digital chores. Beyond collecting information and serving their own unique functions, these devices now autonomously connect to social networks and interact with one another in ways meant to replicate human social networking. Phenomenal Things is a comical look at the social lives of these devices, from inside the Internet of Things. Told with the aid of an Augmented Reality Head Worn Display, the story stars anthropomorphized devices of a smart home network and is centered around the idea of these devices welcoming a new smart bulb to their network. The AR actors engage in dialogue to explain the network to the new bulb, what they are all doing there and how to communicate with other beings online. Participants can directly impact the version of the story being told by "friending" the various devices and thus influencing their point of view as so often happens with the social network experiences of humans.

Despite the increasingly sophisticated capabilities of mobile AR guidance applications in providing new ways of interacting with the surrounding environment, empirical research remains needed in four principal areas: 1) identifying user needs and use cases, 2) developing an appropriate theoretical framework, 3) understanding user's interactions with the surrounding environment, and 4) avoiding information overload. To address these needs, a mixed-methods approach, involving two studies, was used to extend current Situation Awareness (SA) theory and evaluate the application of an extended theory. These were achieved in the context of a reality-augmented environment for the task of exploring an unfamiliar urban context. The first study examined SA in terms of the processes that an individual employs and the essential requirements needed to develop SA for the case of urban exploratory navigation using mobile augmented reality (MAR). From this study, SA-supported design implications for an MAR guidance application were developed, and used to evaluate the application of an extended SA theoretical cognitive model. The second study validated the earlier findings, and involved two specific applications of the translated SA-supported interface design and an evaluation of five conceptual design concepts. Results of the AR interface application suggested a significant SA-supported interface design effect on user's SA, which is dependent on the number of Points of Interest (POIs) included in the interface. Results of the embedded Map interface application showed a significant SA-support interface design effect on a user's SA. The SA-supported interface designs helped participants complete task queries faster and led to higher perceived interface usability. This work demonstrates that, by adopting a systematic approach, transformed requirements can be obtained and used to design and develop SA-supported strategies. In doing so, subsequent implementation of SA-supported strategies could enhance a user's SA in the context exploratory navigation in an urban environment using MAR. Indeed, a validation process was initiated for the extracted user requirements, by conducting evaluations on these SA-supported strategies. Finally, a set of preliminary design recommendations is proposed, with the goal of their eventual incorporation into the design and development of more effective mobile AR guidance applications. / Ph. D.

This study investigated the link between age and gender susceptibility to simulator-induced sickness in conjunction with display type. Simulator-induced sickness and ataxia were measured before and after exposure to a medium-fidelity driving simulator. Participants in four age and gender categories (older and younger males and females) operated the simulator with a consumer-grade head-mounted display (HMD), and then with a large screen, direct-view plasma display. This study set out to recommend a particular display type that would be appropriate for use with particular age/gender groups in a general-purpose driving simulator. Unfortunately, practice effects affected the simulator-induced sickness and driving performance results for display type, which precludes making recommendations regarding the appropriate use of each display. Despite this, several important discoveries were made, including: 1) older participants did experience significantly increased simulator-induced sickness discomfort than the younger participants - regardless of display type; and 2) there was no significant difference found between genders in either simulator-induced sickness or driving performance; although females generally expressed a subjective preference for the direct-view display. Display type was not found to affect the degree of ataxia experienced by participants; however, this study did find that although older participants exhibited significantly higher rates of simulator-induced sickness discomfort than the younger participants, they recovered their postural equilibrium significantly faster. This indicates that the older participants had greater difficulty adapting to the simulation environment than younger persons. It also suggests that younger persons are at greater risk during immediate post-simulation activities such as driving. Although it is likely that this effect would disappear over time, it has implications for agencies such as the Department of Motor Vehicles or drivers education schools that are considering the use of a driving simulator device before an on-road skills test. / Master of Science

Muted Blue (Whale Level) is a Virtual Reality educational experience that explores the possibility of creating an alternative learning method in an informal learning setting such as a museum. This project seeks to merge art, technology and education to create an immersive, interactive learning experience that is geared toward Gen Z and Millennial but can be enjoyed by every age group. Unreal 4 game engine along with other 3D packages made it possible to develop a Virtual Reality experience that can be used as a complimentary piece that can possibly exist along side a museum exhibit. / Master of Fine Arts / Muted Blue (Whale Level) is an interactive museum experience that aims to give audience a more informative and interactive digital experience. The main focus of Muted Blue is allowing users to explore and learn at their own pace. This Virtual Reality Museum idea in particular, is geared toward the potential museum goers that are in the Gen Z and Millennial generations because technology has been an integral part of their lives. Muted Blue (Whale Level) is capable of creating an impossible space that cannot be recreated inside of a real museum while providing meaningful, educational information along with beautiful visuals that will assist with the learning process and inspire the users to learn and care more about our ocean.

Virtual Reality is a young field and needs more research to mature. In order to help speed the maturity process research was performed to see if knowledge from the domain of software engineering could be applied to the development of Virtual Reality software. Software engineering is a field within computer science that studies how to improve both product and process. One of the sub-fields of software engineering is metrics, which seeks to measure software products and processes. This allows for prediction of certain attributes such as quality. There are several software toolkits that exist in virtual reality that have not had formal software engineering methodologies applied during their development. This research looks at applying knowledge gained from the metrics discipline to the software toolkits used in virtual reality. When metrics are used to measure the toolkits in virtual reality, the metrics seem to behave--produce similar significant correlations--in a similar fashion as when they are applied in previously studied domains. / Master of Science