Department of Computer Science
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Course Title: Special Topics in Immersive Human-Computer Interaction
Course Number: CS-525H
Semester Fall 2010

Description: Immersive environments are those which give the user the feeling of occupying a space different from their current physical space. They are created in the mind of the user by careful selection of sensory stimuli and support for natural interaction. This course focuses on the design and evaluation of user interfaces that support user immersion in several contexts, including desktop, head-mounted display, large-screen, and mobile situations. Through a combination of traditional lecture, literature review, and hands-on work, students will learn to critically evaluate different alternatives, build prototype systems, and design comparative evaluations to test the effectiveness of various techniques. Students will be expected to implement several techniques as part of this course.

Prerequisites: The ability to program.


Meeting Info: Mondays 6:00-8:50,
Fuller Labs (FL), Room 320

Instructor: Prof. Robert W. Lindeman
E-Mail: gogo at wpi.edu
Telephone: x6712

Textbooks: 3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice, Bowman, Kruijff, LaViola, Poupyrev, 2005, Addison Wesley, ISBN: 0-201-75867-9

Papers: Here is a link to the papers we will be reading for this course.

Final Projects: Here are links to videos of the final projects comepleted by the students:

General:

Questions and discussion are highly encouraged throughout the class meetings. It is hoped that the work done in this course will lead to the design of novel and interesting approaches to immersive user interfaces, the development of studies, and eventally submissions of results to appropriate venues.

Course Schedule:

Week Dates Class Topics Readings/Summaries/Projects
1 08/30 Introduction to 3D User Interfaces
What is Immersion?
2 09/06 NO CLASS, LABOR DAY Ch. 1 & 2
3 09/13 Input Devices Sadowski, W., Stanney, K. (2002) Presence in Virtual Environments, Handbook of Virtual Environments: Design, Implementation, and Applications, K. Staanney (Ed.), Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 791-806.
4 09/20 Visual Displays
Non-Visual Displays 		Ch. 3 & 4
Slater, M., and Usoh, M. (1994) Body Centred Interaction in Immersive Virtual Environments, N. Magnenat Thalmann and D. Thalmann (eds.), Artificial Life and Virtual Reality, John Wiley and Sons, 125-148.
5 09/27 Selection & Manipulation Ch. 5
Mine, M., Brooks, F.P., Sequin, C. (1997) Moving Objects in Space: Exploiting Proprioception in Virtual-Environment Interaction, Proc. of ACM SIGGRAPH '97, pp. 19-26.
ASSIGNED: Project 1: Mobile Bomb Squad
6 10/04 Comparing Flow, Presence, Immersion & Situation Awareness Jenova Chen MFA Thesis
Thesis Page
Play the Game
STATUS DEMO PART 1: Project 1: Mobile Bomb Squad
7 10/11 Moving Around Ch. 6
Riley, J.M., Kaber, D.B., & Draper, J.V. (2004) Situation awareness and attention allocation measures for quantifying telepresence experiences in teleoperation, Human Factors & Ergonomics in Manufacturing, Vol. 14 (1) 51-67.
STATUS DEMO PART 2: Project 1: Mobile Bomb Squad
8 10/18 NO CLASS, SEMESTER BREAK
9 10/25 Wayfinding: Knowing where you are
DUE: Project 1: Mobile Bomb Squad
10 11/01 Augmenting Reality
  1. Darken, R., Allard, T. & Achille, L.B. (1998) SpatialOrientation and Wayfinding in Large-Scale Virtual Spaces: An Introduction, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 7(2), pp. 101-107.
  2. Milgram, P., & Kishino, F. (1994) A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays, IEICE Trans. on Info. Sys., Vol E77-D, No.12, December 1994.
11 11/08 Symolic Input
Hollerer, T., & Feiner, S. (2004) Mobile Augmented Reality, in Telegeoinformatics: Location-Based Computing and Services, H Karimi and A. Hammad (eds.), pp. 221-256.
ASSIGNED: Project 2: AR for the Masses
12 11/15 Future/SciFi Interfaces MacKenzie, I.S. & Soukoreff, R.W. (2002) Text Entry for Mobile Computing: Models and Methods, Theory and Practice, Human-Computer Interaction, 2002, Vol. 17, pp. 147-198.
STATUS DEMO: Project 2: AR for the Masses
13 11/22
DUE: Project 2: AR for the Masses
14 11/29 Evaluation & Statistical Methods
15 12/06
DUE: Movie Summary
16 12/13

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