arXiv subjects

Wenge Xu

Publications and source records attributed to Wenge Xu.

15 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Towards Inclusive External Human-Machine Interface: Exploring the Effects of Visual and Auditory eHMI for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing People

External Human-Machine Interfaces (eHMIs) have been proposed to facilitate communication between Automated Vehicles (AVs) and pedestrians. However, no attention was given to Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) people. We conducted a formative study through focus groups with 6 DHH people and 6 key stakeholders (including researchers, assistive technologists, and automotive interface designers) to compare proposed eHMIs and extract key design requirements. Subsequently, we investigated the effects of visual and auditory eHMI in a virtual reality user study with 32 participants (16 DHH). Results from our scenario suggesting that (1) DHH participants spent more time looking at the AV; (2) both visual and auditory eHMIs enhanced trust, usefulness, and perceived safety; and (3) only visual eHMIs reduced the time to step into the road, time looking at the AV, gaze time, and percentage looking at active visual eHMI components. Lastly, we provided five practical implications for making eHMI inclusive of DHH people.

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arXiv2026

Exploring the Impacts of Background Noise on Auditory Stimuli of Audio-Visual eHMIs for Hearing, Deaf, and Hard-of-Hearing People

External Human-Machine Interfaces (eHMIs) have been proposed to enhance communication between automated vehicles (AVs) and pedestrians, with growing interest in multi-modal designs such as audio-visual eHMIs. Just as poor lighting can impair visual cues, a loud background noise may mask the auditory stimuli. However, its effects within these systems have not been examined, and little is known about how pedestrians -- particularly Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) people -- perceive different types of auditory stimuli. We conducted a virtual reality study (Hearing N=25, DHH N=11) to examine the effects of background noise (quiet and loud) on auditory stimuli (baseline, bell, speech) within an audio-visual eHMI. Results revealed that: (1) Crossing experiences of DHH pedestrians significantly differ from Hearing pedestrians. (2) Loud background noise adversely affects pedestrians' crossing experiences. (3) Providing an additional auditory eHMI (bell/speech) improves crossing experiences. We outlined four practical implications for future eHMI design and research.

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arXiv2025

Conducting VR User Studies with People with Vision/Hearing Impairments: Challenges and Mitigation Strategies

There is a lack of virtual reality (VR) user studies that have been conducted involving people with vision/hearing impairments. This is due to the difficulty of recruiting participants and the accessibility barriers of VR devices. Based on the authors' experience conducting VR user studies with participants with vision/hearing impairments, this position paper identifies 5 key challenges (1. Recruitment, 2. Language Familiarity, 3. Technology Limitations and Barriers, 4. Access to Audio Cue, and 5. Travelling to the Experiment Location) and proposes strategic approaches to mitigate these challenges. In addition, we also presented three key considerations regarding understanding participants' lived experiences that could help the user study become accessible.

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arXiv2024

Exploring the Impact of Passthrough on VR Exergaming in Public Environments: A Field Study

Sedentary behavior is becoming increasingly prevalent in daily work and study environments. VR exergaming has emerged as a promising solution in these places of work and study. However, private spaces in these environments are not easy, and engaging in VR exergaming in public settings presents its own set of challenges (e.g., safety, social acceptance, isolation, and privacy protection). The recent development of Passthrough functionality in VR headsets allows users to maintain awareness of their surroundings, enhancing safety and convenience. Despite its potential benefits, little is known about how Passthrough could affect user performance and experience and solve the challenges of playing VR exergames in real-world public environments. To our knowledge, this work is the first to conduct a field study in an underground passageway on a university campus to explore the use of Passthrough in a real-world public environment, with a disturbance-free closed room as a baseline. Results indicate that enabling Passthrough in a public environment improves performance without compromising presence. Moreover, Passthrough can increase social acceptance, especially among individuals with higher levels of self-consciousness. These findings highlight Passthrough's potential to encourage VR exergaming adoption in public environments, with promising implications for overall health and well-being.

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arXiv2024

Enhancement of Co-located Shared VR Experiences: Representing Non-HMD Observers on Both HMD and 2D Screen

Virtual reality (VR) not only allows head-mounted display (HMD) users to immerse themselves in virtual worlds but also to share them with others. When designed correctly, this shared experience can be enjoyable. However, in typical scenarios, HMD users are isolated by their devices, and non-HMD observers lack connection with the virtual world. To address this, our research investigates visually representing observers on both HMD and 2D screens to enhance shared experiences. The study, including five representation conditions, reveals that incorporating observer representation positively impacts both HMD users and observers. For how to design and represent them, our work shows that HMD users prefer methods displaying real-world visuals, while observers exhibit diverse preferences regarding being represented with real or virtual images. We provide design guidelines tailored to both displays, offering valuable insights to enhance co-located shared VR experiences for HMD users and non-HMD observers.

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arXiv2023

Who's Watching Me?: Exploring the Impact of Audience Familiarity on Player Performance, Experience, and Exertion in Virtual Reality Exergames

Familiarity with audiences plays a significant role in shaping individual performance and experience across various activities in everyday life. This study delves into the impact of familiarity with non-playable character (NPC) audiences on player performance and experience in virtual reality (VR) exergames. By manipulating of NPC appearance (face and body shape) and voice familiarity, we explored their effect on game performance, experience, and exertion. The findings reveal that familiar NPC audiences have a positive impact on performance, creating a more enjoyable gaming experience, and leading players to perceive less exertion. Moreover, individuals with higher levels of self-consciousness exhibit heightened sensitivity to the familiarity with NPC audiences. Our results shed light on the role of familiar NPC audiences in enhancing player experiences and provide insights for designing more engaging and personalized VR exergame environments.

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arXiv2022

Exploring Text Selection in Augmented Reality Systems

Text selection is a common and essential activity during text interaction in all interactive systems. As Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) become more widespread, they will need to provide effective interaction techniques for text selection that ensure users can complete a range of text manipulation tasks (e.g., to highlight, copy, and paste text, send instant messages, and browse the web). As a relatively new platform, text selection in AR is largely unexplored and the suitability of interaction techniques supported by current AR HMDs for text selection tasks is unclear. This research aims to fill this gap and reports on an experiment with 12 participants, which compares the performance and usability (user experience and workload) of four possible techniques (Hand+Pinch, Hand+Dwell, Head+Pinch, and Head+Dwell). Our results suggest that Head+Dwell should be the default selection technique, as it is relatively fast, has the lowest error rate and workload, and has the highest-rated user experience and social acceptance.

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arXiv2022

Evaluation of Text Selection Techniques in Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays

Text selection is an essential activity in interactive systems, including virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs). It is useful for: sharing information across apps or platforms, highlighting and making notes while reading articles, and text editing tasks. Despite its usefulness, the space of text selection interaction is underexplored in VR HMDs. In this research, we performed a user study with 24 participants to investigate the performance and user preference of six text selection techniques (Controller+Dwell, Controller+Click, Head+Dwell, Head+Click, Hand+Dwell, Hand+Pinch). Results reveal that Head+Click is ranked first since it has excellent speed-accuracy performance (2nd fastest task completion speed with 3rd lowest total error rate), provides the best user experience, and produces a very low workload -- followed by Controller+Click, which has the fastest speed and comparable experience with Head+Click, but much higher total error rate. Other methods can also be useful depending on the goals of the system or the users. As a first systematic evaluation of pointing*selection techniques for text selection in VR, the results of this work provide a strong foundation for further research in this area of growing importance to the future of VR to help it become a more ubiquitous and pervasive platform.

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arXiv2022

An Exploration of Hands-free Text Selection for Virtual Reality Head-Mounted Displays

Hand-based interaction, such as using a handheld controller or making hand gestures, has been widely adopted as the primary method for interacting with both virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs). In contrast, hands-free interaction avoids the need for users' hands and although it can afford additional benefits, there has been limited research in exploring and evaluating hands-free techniques for these HMDs. As VR HMDs become ubiquitous, people will need to do text editing, which requires selecting text segments. Similar to hands-free interaction, text selection is underexplored. This research focuses on both, text selection via hands-free interaction. Our exploration involves a user study with 24 participants to investigate the performance, user experience, and workload of three hands-free selection mechanisms (Dwell, Blink, Voice) to complement head-based pointing. Results indicate that Blink outperforms Dwell and Voice in completion time. Users' subjective feedback also shows that Blink is the preferred technique for text selection. This work is the first to explore hands-free interaction for text selection in VR HMDs. Our results provide a solid platform for further research in this important area.

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arXiv2022

Comparative Study of AR Versus Image and Video for Exercise Learning

There is inadequate attention to using mobile Augmented Reality (AR) in fitness, despite mobile AR being easy to use, requiring no extra cost, and can be a powerful learning tool. In this work, we present a mobile AR application that can help users learn exercises with a virtual personal trainer. We conduct a user study with 10 participants to investigate the learning quality of the ARFit (i.e., the proposed mobile AR application) in comparison to traditional methods such as Image-based learning and Video-based learning. Our results indicate that participants have a higher learning quality of exercise with mobile AR than (1) Image-based learning among all exercises selected and (2) video-based learning with exercise that requires greater spatial knowledge, with the performance evaluated by a qualified personal trainer. In addition, ARFit has an excellent rating in usability, is deemed to be highly acceptable, and is the preferred exercise learning method by most participants (N=9)

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arXiv2021

Virtual Reality Sickness Mitigation Methods: A Comparative Study in a Racing Game

Using virtual reality (VR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) can induce VR sickness. VR sickness can cause strong discomfort, decrease users' presence and enjoyment, especially in games, shorten the duration of the VR experience, and can even pose health risks. Previous research has explored different VR sickness mitigation methods by adding visual effects or elements. Field of View (FOV) reduction, Depth of Field (DOF) blurring, and adding a rest frame into the virtual environment are examples of such methods. Although useful in some cases, they might result in information loss. This research is the first to compare VR sickness, presence, workload to complete a search task, and information loss of these three VR sickness mitigation methods in a racing game with two levels of control. To do this, we conducted a mixed factorial user study (N = 32) with degree of control as the between-subjects factor and the VR sickness mitigation techniques as the within-subjects factor. Participants were required to find targets with three difficulty levels while steering or not steering a car in a virtual environment. Our results show that there are no significant differences in VR sickness, presence and workload among these techniques under two levels of control in our VR racing game. We also found that changing FOV dynamically or using DOF blur effects would result in information loss while adding a target reticule as a rest frame would not.

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arXiv2021

Effect of Gameplay Uncertainty, Display Type, and Age on Virtual Reality Exergames

Uncertainty is widely acknowledged as an engaging gameplay element but rarely used in exergames. In this research, we explore the role of uncertainty in exergames and introduce three uncertain elements (false-attacks, misses, and critical hits) to an exergame. We conducted a study under two conditions (uncertain and certain), with two display types (virtual reality and large display) and across young and middle-aged adults to measure their effect on game performance, experience, and exertion. Results show that (1) our designed uncertain elements are instrumental in increasing exertion levels; (2) when playing a motion-based first-person perspective exergame, virtual reality can improve performance, while maintaining the same motion sickness level as a large display; and (3) exergames for middle-aged adults should be designed with age-related declines in mind, similar to designing for elderly adults. We also framed two design guidelines for exergames that have similar features to the game used in this research.

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arXiv2020

Real-Time Detection of Simulator Sickness in Virtual Reality Games Based on Players' Psychophysiological Data during Gameplay

Virtual Reality (VR) technology has been proliferating in the last decade, especially in the last few years. However, Simulator Sickness (SS) still represents a significant problem for its wider adoption. Currently, the most common way to detect SS is using the Simulator Sickness Questionnaire (SSQ). SSQ is a subjective measurement and is inadequate for real-time applications such as VR games. This research aims to investigate how to use machine learning techniques to detect SS based on in-game characters' and users' physiological data during gameplay in VR games. To achieve this, we designed an experiment to collect such data with three types of games. We trained a Long Short-Term Memory neural network with the dataset eye-tracking and character movement data to detect SS in real-time. Our results indicate that, in VR games, our model is an accurate and efficient way to detect SS in real-time.

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arXiv2020

VirusBoxing: A HIIT-based VR boxing game

Physical activity or exercise can improve people's health and reduce their risk of developing several diseases; most importantly, regular activity can improve the quality of life. However, lack of time is one of the major barriers for people doing exercise. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) can reduce the time required for a healthy exercise regime but also bring similar benefits of regular exercise. We present a boxing-based VR exergame called VirusBoxing to promote physical activity for players. VirusBoxing provides players with a platform for HIIT and empowers them with additional abilities to jab a distant object without the need to aim at it precisely. In this paper, we discuss how we adapted the HIIT protocol and gameplay features to empower players in a VR exergame to give players an efficient, effective, and enjoyable exercise experience.

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arXiv2020

Exploration of Hands-free Text Entry Techniques For Virtual Reality

Text entry is a common activity in virtual reality (VR) systems. There is a limited number of available hands-free techniques, which allow users to carry out text entry when users' hands are busy such as holding items or hand-based devices are not available. The most used hands-free text entry technique is DwellType, where a user selects a letter by dwelling over it for a specific period. However, its performance is limited due to the fixed dwell time for each character selection. In this paper, we explore two other hands-free text entry mechanisms in VR: BlinkType and NeckType, which leverage users' eye blinks and neck's forward and backward movements to select letters. With a user study, we compare the performance of the two techniques with DwellType. Results show that users can achieve an average text entry rate of 13.47, 11.18 and 11.65 words per minute with BlinkType, NeckType, and DwellType, respectively. Users' subjective feedback shows BlinkType as the preferred technique for text entry in VR.

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