CHI´22 WORKSHOP - VR [WE ARE] TRAINING

COLLABORATIVE VIRTUAL TRAINING FOR CHALLENGING TRAINING SITUATIONS

https://xcelab.tech-experience.at/CHI22-workshop.html

Virtual reality provides great opportunities to simulate various environments and situations as reproducible and controllable training environments. Training is an inherently collaborative effort, with trainees and trainers working together to achieve specific goals.

Recently, we have seen considerable effort to use virtual training environments (VTEs) in many demanding training contexts, e.g. first responder training. For such contexts, trainers and trainees must undertake various roles as supervisors, adaptors, role players, and observers in training, making collaboration complex, but essential for training success. These social and multi-user aspects for collaborative VTEs have received little investigation so far.

In this workshop we want to discuss potential and perspectives of VTEs for computer-supported special work-related training settings. In a one-day online workshop, researchers and practitioners will jointly develop a research agenda on how currently underrepresented aspects of social and collaborative work can be integrated into VR-supported training.

The overarching goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and backgrounds to jointly develop a research agenda on how currently underrepresented aspects of social and collaborative work can be integrated into VR-supported training. Therefore, we aim include a broad range of participants from various fields, with perspectives from e.g. work psychology, HCI and user experience experts, end-user organizations, VR developers, and trainers.

The workshop will result in two main outcomes:

• Participants' submissions (position statements or motivation/speculation statement) will be published online through the workshop webpage and submitted to a preprint server (e.g. arXiv)

• The workshop will result in a joint research agenda and declaration statement that will be released via the website. We will strive for publishing this research agenda and position statement in a peer-reviewed journal.

We will select participants based on the potential contribution they can offer to the workshop agenda. To lower the barrier for participants from non-scientific organizations (e.g. end-user partners and practitioners) we will open the workshop to two forms of contribution.

More Information how to participate can be found in the Call for Papers / Contributions

THEMES

This workshop will focus on two main themes: (1) Collaboration between trainer(s) and trainee(s) in VTEs and (2) Novel collaborative interfaces for VTEs.

Collaboration between trainers, trainers and trainee(s), and trainees in VTE

The interplay between the trainer, who sets and controls the training, and the trainees, who participate in the training, is a promising field for research. VR training builds competencies for instructors as well as trainees. Sharing a virtual environment fosters empathy, allowing the trainer to walk around and truly observe students as they experience the training scenarios. As an instructor, you can annotate mistakes and provide constructive feedback in real-time. This way, the student can correct themselves while the instruction is still fresh in their minds. Additionally, the training session can also be recorded and replayed later in 3D to evaluate and review trainees and/or trainers in order to further improve the trained skills. Continuous, evolving feedback is especially valuable when people are trained for medical emergencies. Automated tracking and analysis of trainees’ head or eye movements, another layer of customized feedback.

In this theme, we want to address these -- non-exhaustive -- topics:

• Innovative interaction concepts between trainer and trainee in VR (role plays, how to create a social bond/connection between trainer and trainee, collaboration between different trainer functions, etc.)

• Live manipulation of the virtual environment by the trainer in VR allowing the trainer to change context and situation

• Real-time performance measurements in VR and dashboards to visualize those measurements

• Use of bio-signal measurements (heart rate, heart rate variability, eye tracking, etc.) for adaptive, individualized training, including automatized context-changes depending on the measurements.

• Didactic concepts for training in VR (e.g. familiarization, strategies to foster transfer and retention etc.)

• How to best integrate and combine traditional with virtual training

Novel collaborative interfaces for VTE

Social and multi-user aspects for truly collaborative VTEs have received far less investigation so far, as many systems are designed for single-person use only. Some research has been conducted on synchronous collaboration in VR e.g. on providing reviews and feedback in VR, non-verbal interface for CVEs and remote collaboration. However the findings and considerations have not yet been transferred to the context of learning and training as parts of social and collaborative work. Therefore we consider this a fruitful topic to debate which interaction approaches and interfaces are needed to provide meaningful cooperation and to support social work of multiple persons. Especially persons with different roles and abilities (e.g. trainer and trainees)

In this theme we want to address these -- non-exhaustive -- topics:

• Use of tangible devices/interfaces as learning support or for better simulation of the context (e.g. fire hose in a fire exercise)

• Prevention of problems and errors (e.g. motion sickness, not taking training seriously etc.)

• Multi-sensory experience for better training simulation (including people's sense of smell, hearing, touch, etc.)

AGENDA

The workshop will be held as a one-day online event (9:00 to 17:00) on Monday April 25, 2022. We will start with inspirational statements (lightning talks) by experts in HCI, user experience, and VR, industry organizations developing VR trainings, and end-users organizations that could benefit from collaborative training systems. This will be followed by two sessions in which the participants present their positions, statements, and speculations. Building on the presented topics, we will select occurring themes and discuss them in dedicated break-out sessions. We aim for approx. three to four themes with three to five participants per break-out session). Subsequently, the themes will be presented and discussed with all participants based on which a joint research agenda statement will be developed. Lastly, we will host a voluntary get-together session in the evening.

Proposed timetable of the workshop:

• 09:00-09:30: Introduction of workshop theme and goals. Introduction of organizers and participants.

• 09:30-10:30: Lightning talks (3 lightning talks, each 20 minutes)

• 10:30-10.45: Coffee break

• 10:45-12:00: Session 1: Position statements and speculations

• 12:00-13:00: Lunch break

• 13:00-14:30: Session 2: Position statements and speculations

• 14:30-14.45: Coffee break

• 14:45-16.00: Development of research agenda (breakout sessions)

• 16:00-16.45: Development of research agenda (plenary)

• 16.45-17:00: Wrap Up

• (18:30-19:30: Voluntary networking session and social event)

The concrete timezone will be selected after the notifcation deadline to suit the needs of most participants.

PARTICIPATION

Important dates

Submission deadline (11:59pm, AoE): (February 24, 2022) Deadline Extension to March 3, 2022

Notification of acceptance: (March 10, 2022) March 15, 2022

One-day workshop: April 25, 2022

Virtual reality provides great opportunities to simulate various environments and situations as reproducible and controllable training environments. Recently, we have seen considerable effort to use virtual training environments (VTEs) in many demanding training contexts, e.g. police training, medical first responder training, firefighter training, etc.

The overarching goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and backgrounds in order to jointly develop a research agenda on how currently underrepresented aspects of social and collaborative work can be integrated into VR training.

Participants will either submit a position paper (max. 4 pages ACM format) addressing one of the themes of the workshop,or submit a motivation statement, describing their motivation to join the workshop and/or what they can contribute towards the workshop agenda as well as a description or speculation how their work already benefits or might benefit from collaborative VR training in the future (max. 4 pages ACM Format). All submissions undergo a single blind review process by at least two reviewers.

Therefore, in this one-day online workshop we aim to discuss two themes around training in challenging environments: (1) Multi-sensory experience: novel collaborative interfaces for VTEs and (2) Multi-user interaction: collaboration between trainers and trainees.

To express interest, participants can either:

• submit a position paper (max. 4 pages ACM format – without references) addressing one of the themes of the workshop or

• submit a motivation statement (max. 4 pages ACM format ), describing their reasons for joining the workshop and what they would contribute towards the workshop agenda.

Deadline for submission is (February 24, 2022) March 3, 2022. Submissions must be sent by email to vr-training@tech-experience.at

All submissions undergo a single blind review process. We will select participants based on the potential contribution they can offer to the workshop. We are striving towards a diverse background of participants, aiming for a balance of researchers, practitioners, and end-user organizations.

At least one author of each accepted submission must attend the workshop and all participants must register for the workshop and for at least one day of the conference.

ORGANIZERS

Center for Technology Experience - AIT Austrian Institute of Technology

The Center for Technology Experience deals with fundamental questions about the interaction between people and technology. Based on interdisciplinary principles, they investigate qualities and forms of interaction alongside new methods and tools. User experience research and experience-driven innovation as well as new modalities of interaction have evolved into prominent and required building blocks towards innovative and successful future technologies, applications, and services.

Georg Regal is a scientist at the AIT. He is responsible for the design and development of interaction prototypes. His research is focused on human augmentation, especially virtual reality and interfaces for people with disabilities.

Helmut Schrom-Feiertag is a scientist at the AIT and has specialized in analysis, modeling and simulation of pedestrian behavior, wayfinding behavior and evaluation of guidance systems in the context of urban transportation with a decade of experience in this field. He is currently coordinating the European project Med1stMR, that focuses on medical first responder training. Currently, he is working with VR as a test and training environment, focusing on user experience and behavior research in the context of future technologies and interaction design.

Quynh Nguyen is a junior scientist and PhD student at the AIT. In her research, she aims to develop, evaluate, and use co-creation for the human-centred, sustainable design of future technologies such as XR.

Institute for Fire-Service and Rescue-Technology - fire department Dortmund

In national and EU-wide research projects, the Institute for Fire and Rescue Technology, Dortmund, takes on the role of the practice-oriented end user and actively involves emergency service officers from the fire service in Dortmund. The institute provides its special value through its definition of requirements based on daily experience and of existing needs and through its ability to test and validate research with emergency services. These results influence the future work of the emergency services such as fire protection, rescue services, civil protection and disaster control on site.

Marco Aust is a chemist and has been a security consultant for almost ten years. He is responsible for education and training of emergency service workers. Since 2021, he is working as a scientist for the fire brigade, with a focus on unmanned aerial systems. He is especially interested in using VR to simulate extraordinary situations, e.g. to get used to adrenaline and over-stimulation. This provides the opportunity to not only train standard procedures but to assess one's mental and physical reactions in extreme situations and environments.

USECON

USECON is an internationally operating company with headquarters in Vienna. They support their customers in the challenges of digitisation and transformation, focusing on experience design, user research and interaction innovation from a user-centred point of view. In doing so, the 3 U´s \textit{Usability – User Experience – User Interface Design} are the center of their attention.

Markus Murtinger Since 2006, Markus has been responsible for conducting more than 100 strategic national and international user and customer experience projects. Markus is coordinating the European project SHOTPROS that focuses on police training in stressful situations. In his work, he focuses not only on strategic user and customer experience management but also on user-centred innovation and user satisfaction monitoring.

Center For Human-Computer Interaction -- University of Salzburg

The Center for Human-Computer Interaction is an interdisciplinary research group at the University of Salzburg. Currently, approximately 40 researchers study the interplay between humans and computers in order to enable desired interactions and explore desirable futures. Projects at the Center for HCI take place in contexts that range from kindergartens to factories and include the cutting edge of technologies in areas such as autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, and assistive technologies.

Dorothe Smit is a Research Fellow at the Center for Human-Computer Interaction and a PhD student at the University of Salzburg. Her research focuses on embodied sensemaking in collaborative scenarios supported by hybrid tools, which include VR systems.

Manfred Tscheligi is a key person involved in developing the field of Human-Computer Interaction, a distinguished speaker at conferences, workshops, tutorials and seminars, and the author of many publications. He has initiated and managed a broad variety of national and international research, industrial projects, and initiatives, and has (co)-organized a wide set of workshops (e.g. CHI08 - "Surrounded by ambient persuasion", CHI14 - "TouchMe", CHI16 - "Fabrictaion and HCI" , CHI21 - "Automation Experience at the Workplace" and conferences (e.g. CHI´04, MobileHCI´17, Persuasive Technology´16, ECSCW´19 etc.).

Empathic Computing Laboratory - University of South Australia

The Empathic Computing Laboratory (ECL) is an academic research laboratory at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, and at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. ECL is exploring new ways for technology to enable people to better understand one another. The key research themes are Empathic Computing, Collaborative Interfaces, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality

Mark Bilinghurst is Director of the Empathic Computing Laboratory, and Professor at the University of South Australia in Adelaide, Australia, and also at the University of Auckland in Auckland, New Zealand. He conducts research on how virtual and real worlds can be merged, publishing over 550 papers on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, remote collaboration, Empathic Computing, and related topics. In 2013 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand, and in 2019 was given the ISMAR Career Impact Award in recognition for lifetime contribution to AR research and commercialization.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This workshop is partly supported by the project MED1stMR funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement No 101021775, the project SHOTPROS funded by European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under grant agreement No 833672 and the project Virtual Skills Lab funded by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency FFG in the program Ideen Lab 4.0 under grant agreement No 872573.