Virtual fieldwork on a ship’s bridge: virtual reality-reconstructed operation scenarios as contextual substitutes for fieldwork in design education

Abstract

Designing for professional, high-risk user contexts often implies limited accessibility for interaction designers to conduct field research and field testing, and the measures taken by most universities in Norway in 2020 to prevent COVID-19 spread have further contributed to the problem of achieving the contextual insight needed throughout the design process by severely restricting travel for research purposes. In this paper, we describe the use of virtual reality-reconstructed operation scenarios (VRROS) for Arctic-going vessels implemented in support of and as a substitute for the contextual aspects of fieldwork in the education of master’s students studying interaction design. The virtual reality rig contains three scenarios contextualizing ships’ bridges and their surroundings originally developed for research on designing navigation and operation applications using augmented reality technology. We evaluate whether aspects of the VRROS can substitute for real fieldwork by evaluating students’ use of the VRROS using a student questionnaire. Finally, we discuss the value and potential of using VRROS as a supplement and support when studying how to design for hard-to-reach contexts in the future.

A Virtual Reality Experiment shows that Augmented Reality can improve Collaboration in Ship Navigation

“…In a lab experiment, we simulated ship navigation scenarios in Virtual Reality (VR). VR is an effective method for studying AR interfaces by reconstructing operation scenarios in such a way that both the physical environment and the AR features of the task are virtually presented in a head-mounted VR display (Frydenberg & Nordby, 2022). The design of the experiment was a two-group, randomized, counterbalanced experiment with a between-subject comparison.…”

A Systematic Review of the Design of Serious Games for Innovative Learning: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, or Mixed Reality?

“…Therefore, researchers usually desire benchmark datasets ready to conduct research studies. Table 6 summarizes 15 benchmark datasets in descending order in publication year [109][110][111][112][113][114][115][116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123], comprising VR [109,111,113,114,116,123] or AR [110,112,115,[117][118][119][120][121][122] data for educational research. Driving training to improve vehicle-pedestrian interactions [123] Open access 169 users contributed 1980 gazes and head trajectories using VR automatic alignment of VR video cuts…”

“…For datasets [120,121,123], although the applications are indirectly related to education, the datasets can contribute to user behavior analysis [120], enhancement of the simulation environment [121], and alignment of VR video cuts [123]. There are three types of accessibility for the benchmark datasets, namely open access [109,[119][120][121][122][123], a reasonable request to the corresponding author [110][111][112][113][114][116][117][118], and a request by returning a completed form called an end user license agreement [115]. The first type best maximizes the download rate, whereas the other types facilitate better interactions between researchers (data owners and downloaders).…”

Implementation of Metaverse for Modeling The Ship Bridge Simulator Based on Virtual Reality As Educational Purposes, Case Study: Tanjung Priok Port Area

“…Virtual Reality applications have continued to increase over the last few years because they can be used in many fields. This trend is expected to continue in the future with technological advances in technology, such as computer graphics, control, image processing, and other technology-related components [1]. Virtual reality is a technology that allows users to interact with the virtual world environment so users feel like they are in that environment [2].…”