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CHI 2024: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Meaning Follows Purpose: Unravelling the Architectural Design Conventions in the Contemporary Metaverse

Jihae Han, Andrew Vande Moere, and Adalberto L. Simeone

Thousands of people regularly meet, work and play in the architectural spaces that the metaverse offers today. Yet despite the creative potential to disrupt how the built environment is represented, there exists a prevalent belief that the architectural design of the metaverse is rather conventional and reliant on simulating physical reality. We investigated this claim by conducting a design critique study of the most apparent architectural design conventions within the current most popular metaverse platforms, as determined by a scoping review and Google Trends analysis. Based on the opinions of 21 architectural experts on the design of interiors, buildings, and plazas within these platforms, we elicited three overarching design conventions that capture the representation, engagement, and purpose of metaverse architecture. By discussing the impact of these conventions on architectural quality, we inform the future design of metaverse spaces to more purposefully, and perhaps less frequently, use realism to convey meaning.

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DIS 2023: ACM Designing Interactive Systems

Architectural Narrative VR: Towards Generatively Designing Natural Walkable Spaces

Jihae Han, Andrew Vande Moere, and Adalberto L. Simeone

The current state of Virtual Reality (VR) presents a limited and underwhelming user experience. Users are restricted from naturally walking beyond the physical boundaries of the real world, unable to fully explore large virtual environments. The virtual manifestation also often mirrors the physical features of the real world, neglecting the limitless possibilities of the virtual universe. In response to this limitation, this pictorial introduces Architectural Narrative VR, a generative environment that dynamically designs spaces on-the-fly. This approach enables users to roam freely within the constraints of their physical space, while the architectural proportions and rhythm of virtual spaces are designed to relate to external factors such as the sequential presentation of content and user behaviour. This work contributes to VR research by exploring new ways of generating virtual spaces that prioritise user-dependent rather than predefined manifestations of the architectural narrative, offering greater potential for immersive and multidimensional user experiences.

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CHI 2022: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Student Game Competition

*Winner in category Innovative Interfaces

Persephone’s Feet: A Foot-Based Approach to Play in Virtual Reality

Jihae Han and Adalberto L. Simeone

Persephone’s Feet is a virtual reality game that questions: What if you could only garden with your feet? Exploring a series of three foot-based gestures (Tap, Hover & Shake, and Kick), this work presents a proof-of-concept for a novel virtual reality game for gardening. The game is designed as a relaxation and light exercise activity to take during breaks for the demographic of users who spend prolonged periods of time sedentary at a desk, which is becoming increasingly common for both work and education in modern society. A preliminary evaluation suggests that foot-based gestures can engender fun and motivate light exercise.

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IEEE VR 2022: IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality

Foldable Spaces: An Overt Redirection Approach for Natural Walking in Virtual Reality

Jihae Han, Andrew Vande Moere, Adalberto L. Simeone

Overt redirection is a class of virtual reality locomotion that uses perceptible transformations to enable the user to naturally walk through a virtual environment larger than the physical tracking space. In this research, we propose Foldable Spaces, a novel redirection approach based on the idea of dynamically ‘folding’ the geometry of the virtual environment to reveal new locations depending on the trajectory of the virtual reality user. Based on this approach, we developed three distinct techniques for overt redirection: (1) Horizontal, which folds and reveals layers of virtual space like the pages in a book; (2) Vertical, which rotates virtual space towards the user along a vertical axis; and (3) Accordion, which corrugates and flattens virtual space to bring faraway places closer to the user. In a within-subjects user study, we compared our proposed foldable techniques against each other along with a similarly situated redirection technique, Stop & Reset. Our findings show that Accordion was the most well-received by participants in terms of providing a smooth, continuous, and ‘natural’ experience of walking that does not involve shifts in orientation

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DIS 2021: ACM Designing Interactive Systems

SelectVisAR: Selective Visualisation of Virtual Environments in Augmented Reality

*Robbe Cools, *Jihae Han, Adalberto L. Simeone

When establishing a visual connection between a virtual reality user and an augmented reality user, it is important to consider whether the augmented reality user faces a surplus of information. Augmented reality, compared to virtual reality, involves two – not one – planes of information: the physical and the virtual. We propose SelectVisAR, a selective visualisation system of virtual environments in augmented reality. Our system enables an augmented reality spectator to perceive a co-located virtual reality user in the context of four distinct visualisation conditions: Interactive, Proximity, Everything, and Dollhouse. We explore an additional two conditions, Context and Spotlight, in a follow-up study. Our design uses a human-centric approach to information filtering, selectively visualising only parts of the virtual environment related to the interactive possibilities of a virtual reality user. The research investigates how selective visualisations can be helpful or trivial for the augmented reality user when observing a virtual reality user.

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CHI 2021: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Student Game Competition

*Winner in category Transgressive & Transformative Play

ChemCraft: A Ludic Approach to Educational Game Design

Jihae Han

We constantly both learn from and play with the world around us. We interact, we experiment, and we are curious; and through the spirit of Zimmerman’s ideas on ‘gaming literacy’, we can see the world as opportunities for play. This project thus presents ‘ChemCraft’, an adventure computer game based on chemistry. The game focuses on a ludic approach for educational game design, translating digital game rules from real chemistry rules: gameplay mechanics follow chemical reactions, game objects represent chemical compounds, and game object properties reference real chemistry data values. The game ‘ChemCraft’ targets the niche field of games for higher education, specifically IB Higher Level Organic Chemistry, to investigate to what extent chemistry systems may be translated into game systems. The project asks not ‘What does a chemistry game look like’ but instead: ‘How can chemistry be a game?’

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ISS 2020: ACM Interactive Surfaces and Spaces, Workshop Paper

The Body in Cross-Reality: A Framework for Selective Augmented Visualisation of Virtual Objects

*Jihae Han, *Robbe Cools, Adalberto L. Simeone

The body plays a communicative function in interaction. It expresses how we respond, experience and interact with the world through action, movement, and gestures. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the body in Cross-Reality Interaction between users of different realities in the Reality-Virtuality continuum. We propose a Framework for Selective Augmented Reality Visualisation of Virtual Objects that enables an external Augmented Reality user to perceive an immersed Virtual Reality user against different levels of information. The augmented reality user may observe the real body of the user in the context of visualised objects from the virtual environment, selected according to three criteria: Proximity Threshold, Field of View, and Importance Ranking. We aim to investigate how much and what type of virtual objects need to be visualised in order to convey clear information on the activity and physical engagement of the immersed Virtual Reality user. Two use cases are presented to which this framework can be applied: vocational training on food hygiene and a virtual exhibition for architecture.

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