HCI: Lesson 5

In this last article, we will speak about the new researches in the mixed reality field. What are the new important projects in the AR/VR/MR field ? What are the processes in the research field ? We will talk about these subjects here.

The Publishing Process

This research process follow some classic steps that we can describe here:

- Explore and structure state of the art: the goal is to reach a solid understanding of the current state of research in the topic area. We can read papers, or different project products. The sources are books, scientific articles, PhD dissertations or conference papers. Google Scholar, Cite U Like or SpringerLink are some interesting link where to do the researches. Reading a paper is not really simple: we must read clearly the titles, conclusions and results. Difficult issues are not really important, we must focus on a global understanding.

-Write and publish our paper: now we can publish what we have written, during conferences or for journals. The most important thing is to target the field we want to publish on. We must not forget the deadline, be reviewed by many people and maybe have our paper shown during the conference. The choice is really selective (around 20% kept).

Contribution Types in HCI

The different contributions in the HCI field are the following ones.

We have mostly empirical researches (based on systematically observed data), it can be quantitative or qualitative, and usually follow from scientific studies of various kinds.

We also have artifacts, that are inventions (new systems, tools, techniques or designs) which reveal new opportunities. These are prototypes or mockups with new functionnalities.

Some solutions are methodological (redefining the methods in order to facilitate discoveries, new designs and processes), some are theoretical (new models, principles, concepts, or variations of existing processes). Some new datasets can also be presented as innovations. Papers can present some opinions, in order to try to change the mind of readers through persuasion. Finally, there can be surveys to help researchers to go in the best way.

Current research directions in HCI

Currently, many projects and innovations are presented during great conferences like CHI, Siggraph or UIST. The UIST papers focuses on the engineering part of Computer Graphics and HCI. The subjects often focus on Haptic systems for VR, and the researches uses Mixed Reality more than are about MR. The CHI conference presents many HCI researches, the largest one on this subject, but as the last one, mixed reality is considered as a tool.

As 15 years ago, the main subjects are tracking techniques, interactions techniques, display techniques and applications. However now were added evaluation, rendering and perception notions that were not treated before. The User experience is the axis of progress here (input techniques, haptic feedback, perceptional phenomena, scenarios, interaction designs).

This article is shorter because half of this course was about the last topic (last article). If you want to see new papers, you can watch videos on the youtube channels of the conferences.