Topic Description:

Commonly, virtual reality strives to provide realistic experiences that

resemble interactions in the physical reality. However, in many cases, it is favorable to design interactions that deviate from real-world experiences to support the users in achieving their goals more efficiently. Redirection is an umbrella term for interaction methods that disperse from the one-to-one mapping of users’ bodily input and their representation in the virtual environment through modulating the users’ body movements (2; 5). Although these techniques have been shown to facilitate efficient interaction while being hardly noticeable, their effects on the users’ sense of autonomy and competence remain underexplored. Yet, autonomy and competence are two essential aspects of satisfactory user experiences (1; 4). Especially in the context of accessibility, assistance requires substantial consideration to be usable and inclusive in the long term (3). This thesis should investigate whether redirection techniques can be integrated in VR to support accessibility and how they need to be designed to promote high-quality VR ex periences for users with physical disability. This is a collaborative work between the Human-Centered Systems Lab and Human-Computer Interaction and Accessibility.

The thesis includes the following:

1. Literature Review Acquire an understanding of accessibility in VR and redirection methods.
2. Prototype Implementation Imple ment a VR prototype that supports a configurable redirection method.
3. Evaluation Evaluation of the redi rection methods. Depending on the definite thesis goals, this can be, for example, a user study, an expert eval uation, a qualitative interview, or a heuristic evaluation.
4. Data Analysis Analysis of the collected data. Depending on the study design, this can involve methods from inferential statistics, qualitative analysis, and/or heuristic eval uations
5. Discussion Synthesis of the an alyzed data to answer the research questions. 

Interested? Write a mail to the supervisors

Dmitry Alexandrovsky | Martin Feick

# dmitry.alexandrovsky∂kit.edu | martin.feick∂kit.edu

+ 215 – InformatiKOM II | 5C-04 CS – Kaiserstraße 89

Anthropomatics and Robotics (IAR) | Institute for Information Systems (WIN)

Required Skills

• VR development
• design Interaction

Beneficial Skills

• HCI evaluation methods

References

1. Cimolino, G., Askari, S., and Graham, T. N. The role of partial automation in increasing the accessibility of digital games. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interac- tion 5, CHI PLAY (Oct. 2021), 1–30.
2. Feick, M., Regitz, K. P., Tang, A., Jungbluth, T., Rekrut, M., and Krüger, A. Investigating noticeable hand redirection in virtual reality using physiological and interaction data. In 2023 IEEE Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR) (Shanghai, China,Mar. 2023), IEEE, pp. 194–204.
3. Gerling, K., Dickinson, P., Hicks, K., Mason, L., Simeone, A. L., and Spiel, K. Virtualreality games for people using wheelchairs. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conferenceon Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York, NY, USA, Apr. 2020), CHI ’20, Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1–11.
4. CKilteni, K., Groten, R., and Slater, M. The sense of embodiment in virtual reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 21, 4 (Nov. 2012), 373–387.
5. Suma, E. A., Bruder, G., Steinicke, F., Krum, D. M., and Bolas, M. A taxonomy for deploying redirection techniques in immersive virtual environments. In 2012 IEEE Virtual Reality (VR) (Costa Mesa, CA, USA, Mar. 2012), IEEE.