Psychological Issues of Virtual Environment Interfaces

Casey Boyd, University of Colorado, Boulder
Rudy Darken, Naval Research Laboratory

Sunday, April 14 and Monday, April 15

This workshop provides a common ground for the diverse research on the psychology of virtual environments (VEs). It encompasses an intersection of 1) psychological issues, 2) designing and evaluating for usability, and 3) VE interfaces. The central questions are: What are the components - of human, task, and system - that are relevant to usability and how are their roles understood? Topics include:

spatial orientation and wayfinding in VEs,
designing VEs to leverage on human perceptual abilities,
affordances for navigating and acting in VEs,
designing the controlling inputs to take advantage of human physical abilities and adapt to disabilities,
evaluating 3D interfaces, experiences with usability testing of whole systems,
the interdependence between task features and interfaces.

We invite the participation of researchers and practitioners whose work is on these topics (though possibly not all working directly with VE systems), from research perspectives including Computer Science, Cognitive Psychology, Perceptual and Ecological Psychology, Urban Planning and Architecture, and Industrial Engineering.

Interested persons should submit a short (two- to four-page) position statement describing their research experiences related to the topic and the contribution they would make to the workshop, and a brief description of their background, including past experience with CHI and other workshops. Participants will be chosen on the basis of the relevance of their research, quality of their proposal, and balance of approaches.

This two-day workshop is limited to 15 participants.

For more information

Contact

Casey Boyd
Dept. of Computer Science, CB 430
University of Colorado 
Boulder, CO 80309-0430 USA
E-mail: cboyd@cs.colorado.edu
Tel: +1-303-492-4800
Fax: +1-303-492-2844

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