The advancements in the field of VR allow designers to use VR as a technology for sketching ideas in a virtual space. In this paper, Gravity Sketch (a VR sketching software) is used as an ideation sketching tool in the process of product styling. The goal of this research is to examine the advantages and points-of-pain when using virtual reality tools in the process of product styling. 29 Master students used the VR sketching tool in their design process and all of them had feedback and insights on the tool.

Operators in closed-circuit television (CCTV) control rooms have to monitor large sets of video feeds coming from an ever increasing number of cameras. To assist these operators in their demanding day-to-day tasks, AI-driven support systems accompanied by user-centric interfaces are being developed. However, prototyping these support systems and testing them in operative control rooms can be a challenge. Therefore, in this paper, we present a virtual reality (VR) control room which can be used to investigate the effects of existing and future support systems on operators' performance and behaviour in a fully controlled environment. Important assets of this VR control room include the possibility to subject operators to different levels of cognitive load and to monitor their cognitive-affective states using not only subjective but also behavioural and physiological techniques.

Can effects of social influence be elicited in virtual contexts, and if so, under which conditions can they be observed? Answering these questions has theoretical merit, as the answers can help broaden our understanding of the interaction mechanisms described by social psychology. The increasing popularity of immersive media in training applications, however, has made these questions of practical significance. Virtual reality (VR), in particular, is a weapon of choice in designing training and education simulations, as it can be used to generate highly realistic characters and environments. As a consequence, it is key to understand under which circumstances virtual 'others' can facilitate or impede performance and -especially -learning. In this study, we investigated the impact of virtual onlookers on an adapted Serial Reaction Time (SRT) task that was presented in VR. In each trial, participants responded to a series of spherical stimuli by tapping them with handheld controllers when they lit up. Depending on the experiment block, the sequence order was either the permutation of a fixed order (and therefore predictable given the first stimulus), or fully random (and therefore unpredictable). Participants were divided into three groups (audience variable), depending on the environment in which the task was set: a group without onlookers (none condition), a group with a computer-generated audience (CGI condition), and a group being watched by a prerecorded audience (filmed condition). Results showed that the presence of a virtual audience can hamper both overall performance and learning, particularly when the audience appears more realistic. This study further reinforces the notion that the effects of social influence transcend the physical presence of others, but rather extend to virtual audiences.

It is often challenging to measure participants' reactions during user tests where a Wizard-of-Oz (WoZ) method is applied. This method is applied by the observers to validate functionalities of concepts that are difficult to build. In this study, a new technique is developed using virtual reality (VR) to improve the measurement of the participant's reactions during such a test. In this system, called ExperienceDNA, VR user tests can be monitored and controlled through a desktop interface. In addition, physiological trackers (eye tracking and heart rate monitoring) are used to measure what the participant is looking at and to gauge their preferences. Moreover, the use of VR allows for quick adaptations to the virtual environment the participant is confronted with. In this way, highly versatile tests can be conducted while minimising the initial setup effort. Our approach has been validated by performing a pilot test on a predefined use case. The qualitative feedback collected from analysing batches of data from the pilot test is presented in the results section. In conclusion, this paper covers the development, description and evaluation of the ExperienceDNA framework, as well as some ideas for future improvements to this framework.

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