arXiv subjects

Tiffany D. Do

Publications and source records attributed to Tiffany D. Do.

13 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Having Dog Ears "for Real": Effects of Active and Passive Haptics on Embodying Non-Human Body Parts in VR

Embodying non-human body parts in VR is a prevalent practice among certain subcultures and is a personally important creative outlet to many individuals. However, the discrepant morphology between real and virtual bodies can decrease Sense of Embodiment (SoE). Haptic feedback can compensate by increasing SoE felt towards non-human body parts, but there is a literature gap in comparing the effects of different haptic modalities, and their combinations, on SoE. Through an online survey sent out to social VR communities (n = 63), we determined that animal ears are a commonly embodied and ecologically valid non-human body part to study. We then ran a 2x2 within-subjects user study (n = 28) with two independent variables: active haptics, delivered through vibrotactile gloves, and passive haptics, delivered through a physical headband, for when participants reach up to touch virtual dog ears appended to their avatar in VR. Our findings show that (1) passive haptics produced the strongest overall embodiment outcomes, (2) combining modalities reduced the benefits of passive haptics, and (3) SoE towards non-human body parts positively correlates with SoE towards the entire avatar.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2026

DrawSim-PD: Simulating Student Science Drawings to Support NGSS-Aligned Teacher Diagnostic Reasoning

Developing expertise in diagnostic reasoning requires practice with diverse student artifacts, yet privacy regulations prohibit sharing authentic student work for teacher professional development (PD) at scale. We present DrawSim-PD, the first generative framework that simulates NGSS-aligned, student-like science drawings exhibiting controllable pedagogical imperfections to support teacher training. Central to our approach are apability profiles--structured cognitive states encoding what students at each performance level can and cannot yet demonstrate. These profiles ensure cross-modal coherence across generated outputs: (i) a student-like drawing, (ii) a first-person reasoning narrative, and (iii) a teacher-facing diagnostic concept map. Using 100 curated NGSS topics spanning K-12, we construct a corpus of 10,000 systematically structured artifacts. Through an expert-based feasibility evaluation, K--12 science educators verified the artifacts' alignment with NGSS expectations (>84% positive on core items) and utility for interpreting student thinking, while identifying refinement opportunities for grade-band extremes. We release this open infrastructure to overcome data scarcity barriers in visual assessment research.

cs.CY↗

arXiv2025

Evaluating the Impact of LLM-guided Reflection on Learning Outcomes with Interactive AI-Generated Educational Podcasts

This study examined whether embedding LLM-guided reflection prompts in an interactive AI-generated podcast improved learning and user experience compared to a version without prompts. Thirty-six undergraduates participated, and while learning outcomes were similar across conditions, reflection prompts reduced perceived attractiveness, highlighting a call for more research on reflective interactivity design.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

The Full-scale Assembly Simulation Testbed (FAST) Dataset

In recent years, numerous researchers have begun investigating how virtual reality (VR) tracking and interaction data can be used for a variety of machine learning purposes, including user identification, predicting cybersickness, and estimating learning gains. One constraint for this research area is the dearth of open datasets. In this paper, we present a new open dataset captured with our VR-based Full-scale Assembly Simulation Testbed (FAST). This dataset consists of data collected from 108 participants (50 females, 56 males, 2 non-binary) learning how to assemble two distinct full-scale structures in VR. In addition to explaining how the dataset was collected and describing the data included, we discuss how the dataset may be used by future researchers.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2025

Virtual Interviewers, Real Results: Exploring AI-Driven Mock Technical Interviews on Student Readiness and Confidence

Technical interviews are a critical yet stressful step in the hiring process for computer science graduates, often hindered by limited access to practice opportunities. This formative qualitative study (n=20) explores whether a multimodal AI system can realistically simulate technical interviews and support confidence-building among candidates. Participants engaged with an AI-driven mock interview tool featuring whiteboarding tasks and real-time feedback. Many described the experience as realistic and helpful, noting increased confidence and improved articulation of problem-solving decisions. However, challenges with conversational flow and timing were noted. These findings demonstrate the potential of AI-driven technical interviews as scalable and realistic preparation tools, suggesting that future research could explore variations in interviewer behavior and their potential effects on candidate preparation.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

Cultural Reflections in Virtual Reality: The Effects of User Ethnicity in Avatar Matching Experiences on Sense of Embodiment

Matching avatar characteristics to a user can impact sense of embodiment (SoE) in VR. However, few studies have examined how participant demographics may interact with these matching effects. We recruited a diverse and racially balanced sample of 78 participants to investigate the differences among participant groups when embodying both demographically matched and unmatched avatars. We found that participant ethnicity emerged as a significant factor, with Asian and Black participants reporting lower total SoE compared to Hispanic participants. Furthermore, we found that user ethnicity significantly influences ownership (a subscale of SoE), with Asian and Black participants exhibiting stronger effects of matched avatar ethnicity compared to White participants. Additionally, Hispanic participants showed no significant differences, suggesting complex dynamics in ethnic-racial identity. Our results also reveal significant main effects of matched avatar ethnicity and gender on SoE, indicating the importance of considering these factors in VR experiences. These findings contribute valuable insights into understanding the complex dynamics shaping VR experiences across different demographic groups.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

PAIGE: Examining Learning Outcomes and Experiences with Personalized AI-Generated Educational Podcasts

Generative AI is revolutionizing content creation and has the potential to enable real-time, personalized educational experiences. We investigated the effectiveness of converting textbook chapters into AI-generated podcasts and explored the impact of personalizing these podcasts for individual learner profiles. We conducted a 3x3 user study with 180 college students in the United States, comparing traditional textbook reading with both generalized and personalized AI-generated podcasts across three textbook subjects. The personalized podcasts were tailored to students' majors, interests, and learning styles. Our findings show that students found the AI-generated podcast format to be more enjoyable than textbooks and that personalized podcasts led to significantly improved learning outcomes, although this was subject-specific. These results highlight that AI-generated podcasts can offer an engaging and effective modality transformation of textbook material, with personalization enhancing content relevance. We conclude with design recommendations for leveraging AI in education, informed by student feedback.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2024

PARSE-Ego4D: Personal Action Recommendation Suggestions for Egocentric Videos

Intelligent assistance involves not only understanding but also action. Existing ego-centric video datasets contain rich annotations of the videos, but not of actions that an intelligent assistant could perform in the moment. To address this gap, we release PARSE-Ego4D, a new set of personal action recommendation annotations for the Ego4D dataset. We take a multi-stage approach to generating and evaluating these annotations. First, we used a prompt-engineered large language model (LLM) to generate context-aware action suggestions and identified over 18,000 action suggestions. While these synthetic action suggestions are valuable, the inherent limitations of LLMs necessitate human evaluation. To ensure high-quality and user-centered recommendations, we conducted a large-scale human annotation study that provides grounding in human preferences for all of PARSE-Ego4D. We analyze the inter-rater agreement and evaluate subjective preferences of participants. Based on our synthetic dataset and complete human annotations, we propose several new tasks for action suggestions based on ego-centric videos. We encourage novel solutions that improve latency and energy requirements. The annotations in PARSE-Ego4D will support researchers and developers who are working on building action recommendation systems for augmented and virtual reality systems.

cs.CV↗

arXiv2024

Stepping into the Right Shoes: The Effects of User-Matched Avatar Ethnicity and Gender on Sense of Embodiment in Virtual Reality

In many consumer virtual reality (VR) applications, users embody predefined characters that offer minimal customization options, frequently emphasizing storytelling over user choice. We explore whether matching a user's physical characteristics, specifically ethnicity and gender, with their virtual self-avatar affects their sense of embodiment in VR. We conducted a 2 x 2 within-subjects experiment (n=32) with a diverse user population to explore the impact of matching or not matching a user's self-avatar to their ethnicity and gender on their sense of embodiment. Our results indicate that matching the ethnicity of the user and their self-avatar significantly enhances sense of embodiment regardless of gender, extending across various aspects, including appearance, response, and ownership. We also found that matching gender significantly enhanced ownership, suggesting that this aspect is influenced by matching both ethnicity and gender. Interestingly, we found that matching ethnicity specifically affects self-location while matching gender specifically affects one's body ownership.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2023

VALID: A perceptually validated Virtual Avatar Library for Inclusion and Diversity

As consumer adoption of immersive technologies grows, virtual avatars will play a prominent role in the future of social computing. However, as people begin to interact more frequently through virtual avatars, it is important to ensure that the research community has validated tools to evaluate the effects and consequences of such technologies. We present the first iteration of a new, freely available 3D avatar library called the Virtual Avatar Library for Inclusion and Diversity (VALID), which includes 210 fully rigged avatars with a focus on advancing racial diversity and inclusion. We present a detailed process for creating, iterating, and validating avatars of diversity. Through a large online study (n=132) with participants from 33 countries, we provide statistically validated labels for each avatar's perceived race and gender. Through our validation study, we also advance knowledge pertaining to the perception of an avatar's race. In particular, we found that avatars of some races were more accurately identified by participants of the same race.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2021

Using Machine Learning to Predict Game Outcomes Based on Player-Champion Experience in League of Legends

League of Legends (LoL) is the most widely played multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game in the world. An important aspect of LoL is competitive ranked play, which utilizes a skill-based matchmaking system to form fair teams. However, players' skill levels vary widely depending on which champion, or hero, that they choose to play as. In this paper, we propose a method for predicting game outcomes in ranked LoL games based on players' experience with their selected champion. Using a deep neural network, we found that game outcomes can be predicted with 75.1% accuracy after all players have selected champions, which occurs before gameplay begins. Our results have important implications for playing LoL and matchmaking. Firstly, individual champion skill plays a significant role in the outcome of a match, regardless of team composition. Secondly, even after the skill-based matchmaking, there is still a wide variance in team skill before gameplay begins. Finally, players should only play champions that they have mastered, if they want to win games.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2020

The Effects of Object Shape, Fidelity, Color, and Luminance on Depth Perception in Handheld Mobile Augmented Reality

Depth perception of objects can greatly affect a user's experience of an augmented reality (AR) application. Many AR applications require depth matching of real and virtual objects and have the possibility to be influenced by depth cues. Color and luminance are depth cues that have been traditionally studied in two-dimensional (2D) objects. However, there is little research investigating how the properties of three-dimensional (3D) virtual objects interact with color and luminance to affect depth perception, despite the substantial use of 3D objects in visual applications. In this paper, we present the results of a paired comparison experiment that investigates the effects of object shape, fidelity, color, and luminance on depth perception of 3D objects in handheld mobile AR. The results of our study indicate that bright colors are perceived as nearer than dark colors for a high-fidelity, simple 3D object, regardless of hue. Additionally, bright red is perceived as nearer than any other color. These effects were not observed for a low-fidelity version of the simple object or for a more-complex 3D object. High-fidelity objects had more perceptual differences than low-fidelity objects, indicating that fidelity interacts with color and luminance to affect depth perception. These findings reveal how the properties of 3D models influence the effects of color and luminance on depth perception in handheld mobile AR and can help developers select colors for their applications.

cs.HC↗

arXiv2020

Using Collaborative Filtering to Recommend Champions in League of Legends

League of Legends (LoL), one of the most widely played computer games in the world, has over 140 playable characters known as champions that have highly varying play styles. However, there is not much work on providing champion recommendations to a player in LoL. In this paper, we propose that a recommendation system based on a collaborative filtering approach using singular value decomposition provides champion recommendations that players enjoy. We discuss the implementation behind our recommendation system and also evaluate the practicality of our system using a preliminary user study. Our results indicate that players significantly preferred recommendations from our system over random recommendations.

cs.HC↗