Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) offers new ways to support how students learn about the ancient world. However, most classroom studies of IVR have a STEM disciplinary focus, drawing on learning approaches that may not generalise to the humanities. We conducted an in situ study of a humanities-focused educational IVR experience, delivered within a live classroom to students of an ancient history course. Using a between-subjects design (N = 84), we varied the medium of delivery for key teaching content between teacher-led instruction and an IVR experience. Between-group differences in prior knowledge, motivation, and responsiveness to immersive media were controlled for. Two learning outcomes, Recall Performance and Knowledge Engagement, were assessed using a mix of single and multiple-mark examination questions, administered one week after the lesson and repeated twelve weeks later. We found that participants who encountered the teaching content via IVR showed markedly better knowledge retention at twelve weeks than those taught conventionally. This finding runs contrary to several comparable studies and underscores the need for further investigation of IVR's longitudinal effects on learning. We also found that the medium of delivery shaped how students developed conceptual understanding of the material. Those who learned in IVR found the experience visually compelling, but this also fostered a heightened sense of certainty about the “truth” of what they had seen, and a corresponding reduction in willingness to consider alternative interpretations. Conversely, students taught without IVR demonstrated greater imaginative engagement and less certainty, resulting in a more open consideration of competing ideas. Our results are discussed in terms of the implications of IVR-based learning for humanities students, with particular attention to the care required when designing IVR historical experiences for classroom use.

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) offers new ways to support how students learn about the ancient world. However, most classroom studies of IVR have a STEM disciplinary focus, drawing on learning approaches that may not generalise to the humanities. We conducted an in situ study of a humanities-focused educational IVR experience, delivered within a live classroom to students of an ancient history course. Using a between-subjects design (N = 84), we varied the medium of delivery for key teaching content between teacher-led instruction and an IVR experience. Between-group differences in prior knowledge, motivation, and responsiveness to immersive media were controlled for. Two learning outcomes, Recall Performance and Knowledge Engagement, were assessed using a mix of single and multiple-mark examination questions, administered one week after the lesson and repeated twelve weeks later. We found that participants who encountered the teaching content via IVR showed markedly better knowledge retention at twelve weeks than those taught conventionally. This finding runs contrary to several comparable studies and underscores the need for further investigation of IVR's longitudinal effects on learning. We also found that the medium of delivery shaped how students developed conceptual understanding of the material. Those who learned in IVR found the experience visually compelling, but this also fostered a heightened sense of certainty about the "truth" of what they had seen, and a corresponding reduction in willingness to consider alternative interpretations. Conversely, students taught without IVR demonstrated greater imaginative engagement and less certainty, resulting in a more open consideration of competing ideas. Our results are discussed in terms of the implications of IVR-based learning for humanities students, with particular attention to the care required when designing IVR historical experiences for classroom use.

BackgroundApplications of Virtual Reality (VR) in healthcare continue to grow at a rapid pace, yet the challenges and opportunities associated with VR from the perspective of clinicians and healthcare staff remain underexplored, particularly in the context of Teenage and Young Adult (TYA) oncology. This study aims to bridge this knowledge gap by interviewing clinicians and staff regarding the use of VR in TYA cancer care.MethodFourteen semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with a diverse range of healthcare professionals working in TYA oncology within the United Kingdom including oncologists, hematologists, clinical nurse specialists, clinical psychologists, radiographers, play specialists, clinical social workers and youth support coordinators. Data were analysed thematically with three themes and ten sub-themes developed.ResultsThe findings reveal that TYA healthcare professionals are optimistic and enthusiastic about the potential of using VR to enhance cancer care for teenagers and young adults. However, they also expressed notable concerns related to the practical implementation of VR in clinical settings. These concerns included infection and safety risks, privacy and security concerns, cost implications, storage requirements and staff burden. Clinicians and staff proposed valuable applications for VR in TYA oncology specifically in patient distraction, physiotherapy, procedure preparation, and the delivery of psychotherapy, including acceptance and commitment therapy.ConclusionsThis research has demonstrated that despite an enthusiasm to adopt VR in TYA oncology there are still many challenges, both practical and ethical, that must be addressed to enable the successful implementation of VR in hospitals within the UK. Further research into applications of VR for TYA oncology is warranted, particularly in areas of psychology, physiotherapy, and procedure preparation.

This experiment examined the feasibility of 360° video as a tool for public health messaging by investigating the effect that viewing the 360° documentary The Waiting Room VR had on female viewers’ sense of identification, attitudes to breast cancer screening and mortality salience. A key part of the documentary places participants in a viewpoint ambiguously aligned to that of the film’s director and subject, Victoria Mapplebeck (VM), in a scene that recreates her radiotherapy treatment for breast cancer. Eighty female participants watched the documentary either sitting upright with the chair back set at a 90° angle or reclining with the chair back set at a 140° angle (consistent with VMs posture) under conditions of either high or low cognitive load. The effect of posture type was measured explicitly using questionnaires on presence, identification and breast self-examination (BSE) intention as well as implicitly using a lexical decision task to measure death-thought awareness (DTA). Reclined posture led to a higher sense of spatial presence but no increase in identification with VM. Significantly increased identification with VM led to greater intention to conduct BSE. There were no effects of posture, cognitive load or identification on DTA. The implications of these results for using 360° video as a behaviour change tool, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the terror management manipulation and the relevance of spatial viewpoint in 360° video are discussed.

The design of digital technologies for older adults is often premised on deficit models of ageing that position older people as a homogenous group and as passive users of technology, with an overwhelming focus on meeting practical needs in older age. In response, a growing number of scholars in HCI and Science and Technology Studies (STS) are engaging with processes of co-design that situate older adults as experts in their own lives and as central to the design process. These scholars highlight how an essential first phase of co-design is understanding and foregrounding the lifeworlds, experiences and expertise of older adults. This paper responds to these calls, alongside the lack of consideration of minoritised older adults in co-design. It draws on the empirical findings from the first phase of the Connecting Through Culture As We Age project, which places twenty minoritised older adults who identify as disabled, and/or racially and/or socio-economically minoritised, at the centre of a digital innovation process. Through a case study approach, we focus on two of the minoritised older adults involved, to demonstrate the value of bringing together participatory methods with an interdisciplinary lifecourse lens. We highlight the power of this approach for understanding minoritised older adults' relationships with technology, as shaped by experiences across the lifecourse, for building relationships, and ensuring their agency and voice underpin the co-design process.

Personality characteristics can affect how much presence an individual experiences in virtual reality, and researchers have explored how it may be possible to prime users to increase their sense of presence. A personality characteristic that has yet to be explored in the VR literature is imaginative suggestibility, the ability of an individual to successfully experience an imaginary scenario as if it were real. In this paper, we explore how suggestibility and priming affect presence when consulting an ancient oracle in VR as part of an educational experience – a common VR application. We show for the first time how imaginative suggestibility is a major factor which affects presence and emotions experienced in VR, while priming cues have no effect on participants' (n=128) user experience, contrasting results from prior work. We consider the impacts of these findings for VR design and provide guidelines based on our results.

Whilst the use of smart home systems has shown promise in recent years supporting older people's activities at home, there is more evidence needed to understand how these systems impact the type and the amount of shared care in the home. It is important to understand care recipients and caregivers' labour is changed with the introduction of a smart home system to efficiently and effectively support an increasingly aging population with technology. Five older households (8 participants) were interviewed before, immediately after and three months after receiving a Smart Home Health System (SHHS). We provide an identification and documentation of critical incidents and barriers that increased inter-household care work and prevented the SHHS from being successfully accepted within homes. Findings are framed within the growing body of work on smart homes for health and care, and we provide implications for designing future systems for shared home care needs.

Although the use of voice assistants to support older adults at home shows promise, little is known about how the next generation of these devices, which also include displays, can support health and care needs. This question has become more important during COVID-19, when issues of social isolation for older adults have been exacerbated. During social distancing measures in the UK, eleven older adult households (16 participants) were interviewed before receiving an Amazon Echo Show, shortly after receiving it, and after three months of use. We identify ways in which this multi-modal device is used by people in social isolation to support social, care, and information needs in the home. We frame these findings within the growing research area of smart homes for health and care, and provide implications for the adoption, use and acceptance of these devices to support aging in place together.

Issue information for Research for All 5 (2).

Consumer virtual reality (VR) headsets (e.g. Oculus Go) have brought VR non-fiction (VRNF) within reach of at-home audiences. However, despite increase in VR hardware sales and enthusiasm for the platform among niche audiences at festivals, mainstream audience interest in VRNF is not yet proven. This is despite a growing body of critically acclaimed VRNF, some of which is freely available. In seeking to understand a lack of engagement with VRNF by mainstream audiences, we need to be aware of challenges relating to the discovery of content and bear in mind the cost, inaccessibility and known limitations of consumer VR technology. However, we also need to set these issues within the context of the wider relationships between technology, society and the media, which have influenced the uptake of new media technologies in the past. To address this work, this article provides accounts by members of the public of their responses to VRNF as experienced within their households. We present an empirical study – one of the first of its kind – exploring these questions through qualitative research facilitating diverse households to experience VRNF at home, over several months. We find considerable enthusiasm for VR as a platform for non-fiction, but we also find this enthusiasm tempered by ethical concerns relating to both the platform and the content, and a pervasive tension between the platform and the home setting. Reflecting on our findings, we suggest that VRNF currently fails to meet any ‘supervening social necessity’ (Winston, 1996, Technologies of Seeing: Photography, Cinematography and Television. British: BFI.) that would pave the way for widespread domestic uptake, and we reflect on future directions for VR in the home.

Collaborations between human–computer interaction (HCI) researchers and arts practitioners frequently centre on the development of creative content using novel – often emergent – technologies. Concurrently, many of the techniques that HCI researchers use in evaluative participant-based research have their roots in the arts – such as sketching, writing, artefact prototyping and role play. In this reflective paper, we describe a recent collaboration between a group of HCI researchers and dramatists from the immersive theatre organization Kilter, who worked together to design a series of audience-based interventions to explore the ethics of virtual reality (VR) technology. Through a process of knowledge exchange, the collaboration provided the researchers with new techniques to explore, ideate and communicate their work, and provided the dramatists with a solid academic grounding in order to produce an accurate yet provocative piece of theatrically based design fiction. We describe the formation of this partnership between academia and creative industry, document our journey together, and share the lasting impact it has had upon both parties.

We evaluate AR for Plant maintenance by measuring how a prototype guidance system, tested under representative conditions, impacts performance. We are motivated to determine the cost-benefit of interactive guidance for hazardous, repetitive tasks and we observe an improvement of 21% efficiency, 50% accuracy and 19% reduced task load. AR has already been shown to deliver improvements in task performance, however, there is limited research exploring the integration of AR into complete task routines which presents a barrier to adoption. We apply mixed reality guidance via two within-group experiments. We measure efficiency and accuracy over a complete routine conducted under simulated conditions. Results compare AR versus Static and AR versus Adaptive. We conclude AR is best suited to demanding spatial translation and completion under pressure. We suggest AR offers potential in similar routines and propose further work to integrate in a live setting.

Stairlifts are a widely-used technology in the home that help people with mobility issues to go up and down stairs. However, it is unclear how stairlifts are experienced by all household members and what this understanding implies for home healthcare technologies. We investigated the impact of stairlift installations on older adults' households in the UK through a qualitative study investigating the lived experience of the adoption and acceptance of this technology. Interviews and focus groups with primary users, household residents and service providers showed how the wider household identify misalignments between simplified stairlift installation models from service providers and describe a more complex, nuanced emotional journey which involves decision making, conflict and trauma and catharsis and independence. Findings provide transferrable outcomes for the smart home domain by highlighting the multi-resident home, the emotional intrusiveness of home healthcare technologies and the diversity that comes with providing care, unique to every household.

This paper presents a novel mobile serious game, "Space Vision", which uses a hidden-object mechanic with fiducial marker detection to gamify a clinical test of visual acuity - a key marker of childhood eye disease. For Space Vision to become a credible clinical tool that can facilitate the screening and home-monitoring of children's visual acuity, it must be able to sustain player engagement over the extended durations required to detect vision abnormalities. Hence, we pay particular attention to developing effective game characters - a crucial aspect of children's game design. Using an early prototype with 13 school children (aged 5-6 years), we investigate player experiences through a series of evaluation sessions, involving a single one-to-one observational playtest, semi-structured interview, and ideation activity with each child. Thematic analysis of our session video recordings, written observations, and ideation artefacts, found that future game iterations must: increase resonance between players and game characters by providing aesthetic and behavioural customisation, embrace more anthropomorphic styling, better imbue narratives pertaining to children's life scripts, and feature fantasy character powers as a form of self-expression. Meanwhile, greater physical device support and digital incentivisation of body posture and head position are key to improving the reliability of the visual acuity measurement.

Advances in head mounted displays (HMDs) have increased the interest in cinematic virtual reality as an art form. However, the freedom of a viewer in 360 video presents challenges in ensuring that audiences do not inadvertently miss important events and locations. We examined whether the high level of immersion provided by HMDs encourages participants to synchronize their attention during viewing. Sixty-four participants watched the 360° documentary Clouds Over Sidra (VRSE.works, 2015) using either an HMD or via a flat screen tablet display. We used intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis to measure attentional synchrony over the course of the video and to examine whether spatial and temporal factors led to different amounts of correlation both within and between groups. We found significantly greater ISC for the HMD compared to the tablet group. This effect was greatest for scenes with a unidirectional focus and at the start of scenes. We discuss our results in terms of the visual properties and the motor affordances of HMDs versus tablets. Our results show the value of HMDs in increasing attentional synchrony and may provide producers of 360° content insight in how to encourage or discourage synchronization of viewing direction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

For 'looked-after' and adopted children, physical objects are often the only remaining link to their pasts; a portal to stories of former families, homes, and events. The act of reminiscence, known as 'life story work', can help children to process their pasts and overcome trauma. This paper describes the user-centred redesign of Trove, a digital and physical memory box for storing and curating stories about precious objects. We describe our redesign process, synthesising the insights from previous Trove evaluations with looked-after and adopted children, and three re-design workshops with 4 looked-after children at a therapeutic residential school. Our findings advocate for prioritisation of Trove's digital and physical security, the sustainability of its companionship, and the provision of multimedia storytelling to encourage the construction of identity narratives. Inspired by this, we present and discuss the redeveloped Trove, before analysing our participatory design approach with these complex and under-represented groups.

Advances in head mounted displays (HMDs) have increased the interest in cinematic virtual reality as an art form. However, the freedom of a viewer in 360 video presents challenges in ensuring that audiences do not inadvertently miss important events and locations. We examined whether the high level of immersion provided by HMDs encourages participants to synchronize their attention during viewing. Sixty-four participants watched the 360 degrees documentary Clouds Over Sidra (VRSE.works, 2015) using either an HMD or via a flat screen tablet display. We used intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis to measure attentional synchrony over the course of the video and to examine whether spatial and temporal factors led to different amounts of correlation both within and between groups. We found significantly greater ISC for the HMD compared to the tablet group. This effect was greatest for scenes with a unidirectional focus and at the start of scenes. We discuss our results in terms of the visual properties and the motor affordances of HMDs versus tablets. Our results show the value of HMDs in increasing attentional synchrony and may provide producers of 360 degrees content insight in how to encourage or discourage synchronization of viewing direction.

The gap between rich and poor grows inexorably wider not through lack of resources, so much as a failure in philosophy (Corcoran & Carr, 2019). Economic policy and society objectify ex-offenders building almost insurmountable barriers to their reintegration into society. High levels of recidivism are inevitable if employment prospects are no better than sub-Saharan Africa. Through the lens of Amartya Sen’s “Capability Approach”, which challenges economic orthodoxy, “critical pedagogy”, which argues for a more learner empowered approach and “what works in rehabilitation” literature, this article examines Phoenix, a highly successful programme that rehabilitates ex-offenders and the long-term unemployed through enterprise.

The excessive consumption of free sugars - sugar added to food, drinks and existing in honey, syrup and fruit juice - are endemic to the diets of Western children and a leading factor in dental disease. Recent public health interventions and legislation have aimed to safeguard consumer health. However, children and their parents continue to face challenges in understanding the implications of product sugar content for their long-term dental health when weighed against contradictory nutritional benefits and child-friendly marketing. Building upon previous HCI research on serious play for nutritional awareness and leveraging the power of digital pets for enacting behaviour change, we introduce 'the Sugargotchi' an embodied digital companion to raise children's awareness of their dental health and the adverse impacts of free sugars. This paper describes the rationale for the Sugargotchi's development, an overview of our initial prototype, and highlights the key design challenges it faces for household and clinical adoption.

Advances in head mounted displays (HMDs) have increased the interest in cinematic virtual reality as an art form. However, the freedom of a viewer in 360 video presents challenges in ensuring that audiences do not inadvertently miss important events and locations. We examined whether the high level of immersion provided by HMDs encourages participants to synchronize their attention during viewing. Sixty-four participants watched the 360° documentary Clouds Over Sidra (VRSE.works, 2015) using either an HMD or via a flat screen tablet display. We used intersubject correlation (ISC) analysis to measure attentional synchrony over the course of the video and to examine whether spatial and temporal factors led to different amounts of correlation both within and between groups. We found significantly greater ISC for the HMD compared to the tablet group. This effect was greatest for scenes with a unidirectional focus and at the start of scenes. We discuss our results in terms of the visual properties and the motor affordances of HMDs versus tablets. Our results show the value of HMDs in increasing attentional synchrony and may provide producers of 360° content insight in how to encourage or discourage synchronization of viewing direction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).