skip to main content
10.1145/3520495.3520519acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesozchiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Evaluating Virtual Reality as a Tool for Empathic Modelling of Vision Impairment: Insights from a simulated public interactive display experience

Published: 15 September 2022 Publication History

Abstract

Despite being situated in public spaces, public interactive displays (PIDs) are not always designed to be fully inclusive, particularly for people with vision impairments. Prototyping physical PIDs with accessible features can be time-consuming and there are ethical and safety barriers to navigate when recruiting appropriate participants for studies. While it is still important to represent this user group in the design process, empathic modelling can also be used to rapidly simulate some challenges people with disability might face when interacting with a system. Traditionally this method has been performed using physical props, however Virtual reality (VR) is a promising way to help amplify it due to its immersive nature. Despite this, its use as a tool for empathic design remains unexplored. Therefore, our work is aimed towards filling this gap through the evaluation of a VR prototype which simulates the experience of a visually impaired person interacting with a public interactive display. This work contributes design considerations for VR simulations to generate empathy towards people with vision impairment.

References

[1]
AIHW. 2007. A guide to Australian eye health data. Technical Report. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra.
[2]
Australia Government, Department of Health. [n.d.]. Low Vision and Legal Blindness Terms and Descriptions. https://www.health.gov.au/internet/publications/publishing.nsf/Content/ageing-eyehealth-risk-factors.htm~ageing-eyehealth-risk-factors-4.htm~ageing-eyehealth-risk-factors-4-1.htm
[3]
Australian Government. 2013. Accessibility Design Guide: Universal design principles for Australia’s aid program. Technical Report. Australian Government, Canberra, Australia.
[4]
Christine Bauer, Paul Dohmen, and Christine Strauss. 2011. Interactive Digital Signage - An Innovative Service and Its Future Strategies. Proceedings - 2011 International Conference on Emerging Intelligent Data and Web Technologies, EIDWT 2011, 137–142. https://doi.org/10.1109/EIDWT.2011.29
[5]
Cynthia L. Bennett and Daniela K. Rosner. 2019. The Promise of Empathy: Design, Disability, and Knowing the ”Other”. Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300528
[6]
Stéphane Bouchard, Julie St-Jacques, Geneviève Robillard, and Patrice Renaud. 2008. Anxiety Increases the Feeling of Presence in Virtual Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 17, 4(2008), 376–391. https://doi.org/10.1162/pres.17.4.376
[7]
VR Bound. [n.d.]. Do you even need to wear glasses with VR?Retrieved October 17, 2021 from https://www.vrbound.com/guides/do-you-even-need-to-wear-glasses-with-vr
[8]
Doug Bowman and Ryan McMahan. 2007. Virtual Reality: How Much Immersion Is Enough?Computer 40 (08 2007), 36 – 43. https://doi.org/10.1109/MC.2007.257
[9]
Kate Carey, Emily Saltz, Jacob Rosenbloom, Mark Micheli, Judeth Oden Choi, and Jessica Hammer. 2017. Toward Measuring Empathy in Virtual Reality. In Extended Abstracts Publication of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play (Amsterdam, The Netherlands) (CHI PLAY ’17 Extended Abstracts). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 551–559. https://doi.org/10.1145/3130859.3131325
[10]
Hao Chen, Arindam Dey, Mark Billinghurst, and Robert Lindeman. 2017. Exploring the design space for multi-sensory heart rate feedback in immersive virtual reality. 108–116. https://doi.org/10.1145/3152771.3152783
[11]
Elizabeth Churchill, Les Nelson, Laurent Denoue, Jonathan Helfman, and Paul Murphy. 2004. Sharing multimedia content with interactive public displays: A case study. DIS2004 - Designing Interactive Systems: Across the Spectrum, 7–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/1013115.1013119
[12]
Pietro Cipresso, Irene Alice Chicchi Giglioli, Mariano Alcañiz Raya, and Giuseppe Riva. 2018. The Past, Present, and Future of Virtual and Augmented Reality Research: A Network and Cluster Analysis of the Literature. Frontiers in Psychology 9 (2018), 2086. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02086
[13]
Daniel Cruz, Maria Emmel, Mariana Manzini, and Paulo Mendes. 2016. Assistive Technology Accessibility and Abandonment: Challenges for Occupational Therapists. The Open Journal of Occupational Therapy 4 (01 2016). https://doi.org/10.15453/2168-6408.1166
[14]
Visual Impairment North East. [n.d.]. Welcome to Vine Sim Specs. Retrieved August 13, 2021 from https://vinesimspecs.com/
[15]
Vision Impairment North East. [n.d.]. Welcome to Vine Sim Specs. Retrieved October 17, 2021 from https://vinesimspecs.com/
[16]
Graeme Evans. 2009. Built Environment. Vol. 35.
[17]
Joy Goodman-Deane, Sam Waller, Alice-Catherine Collins, and P. Clarkson. 2013. Simulating vision loss: What levels of impairment are actually represented?Contemporary Ergonomics and Human Factors 2013.
[18]
Sandra G. Hart and Lowell E. Staveland. 1988. Development of NASA-TLX (Task Load Index): Results of Empirical and Theoretical Research. In Human Mental Workload, Peter A. Hancock and Najmedin Meshkati (Eds.). Advances in Psychology, Vol. 52. North-Holland, 139 – 183. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4115(08)62386-9
[19]
Luke Hespanhol, Martin Tomitsch, Joel Fredericks, Ian Mcarthur, Ronald Schroeter, and Marcus Foth. 2015. Vote As You Go: Blending interfaces for community engagement into the urban space. https://doi.org/10.1145/2768545.2768553
[20]
IDEO.org. 2015. The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design. IDEO.org / Design Kit, San Francisco.
[21]
Pete Jones, Tamás Somoskeöy, Hugo Chow-Wing-Bom, and David Crabb. 2020. Seeing other perspectives: Evaluating the use of virtual and augmented reality to simulate visual impairments (OpenVisSim). npj Digital Medicine 3 (03 2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-020-0242-6
[22]
Richie Jose, Gun A Lee, and Mark Billinghurst. 2016. A comparative study of simulated augmented reality displays for vehicle navigation. In Proceedings of the 28th Australian conference on computer-human interaction. 40–48.
[23]
Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey Rayport. 1997. Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design. Harvard business review 75 (11 1997), 102–13. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814295505_0016
[24]
Rosemary Lysaght, Rachelle Kranenburg, Carolyn Armstrong, and Terry Krupa. 2015. Participant Recruitment for Studies on Disability and Work: Challenges and Solutions. Journal of occupational rehabilitation 26 (07 2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10926-015-9594-1
[25]
Ville Mäkelä, Rivu Radiah, Saleh Alsherif, Mohamed Khamis, Chong Xiao, Lisa Borchert, Albrecht Schmidt, and Florian Alt. 2020. Virtual Field Studies: Conducting Studies on Public Displays in Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–15.
[26]
Tuuli Mattelmäki, Kirsikka Vaajakallio, and Ilpo Koskinen. 2014. What Happened to Empathic Design?Design Issues 30 (01 2014), 67–77. https://doi.org/10.1162/DESI_a_00249
[27]
Deana McDonagh and Joyce Thomas. 2010. Disability + Relevant Design: Empathic Design Strategies Supporting More Effective New Product Design Outcomes. The Design Journal 13 (07 2010), 180–198. https://doi.org/10.2752/175470710X12735884220899
[28]
Alison Mcmahan. 2003. Immersion, engagement, and presence: A method for analyzing 3-D video games. The Video Game Theory Reader (01 2003), 67–86.
[29]
Zameena Mejia. 2018. LEADERSHIP Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella attributes his success to this one trait. Retrieved August 13, 2021 from https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/26/microsoft-ceo-satya-nadella-attributes-his-success-to-this-one-trait.html
[30]
Microsoft. 2016. Inclusive Microsoft Design. Microsoft.
[31]
Nathan Moore, Soojeong Yoo, Naseem Ahmadpour, Russel Tommy, Martin Brown, and Philip Poronnik. 2019. ALS-SimVR: Advanced Life Support Virtual Reality Training Application. In 25th ACM Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology. 1–2.
[32]
Joschka Mütterlein. 2018. The Three Pillars of Virtual Reality? Investigating the Roles of Immersion, Presence, and Interactivity. https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2018.174
[33]
Nicole Nascivera, Yari Alfano, Tilde Annunziato, Vittoria Iorio, Valeria Cioffi, Raffaele Sperandeo, Margherita Rosato, Teresa Longobardi, and Nelson Maldonato. 2018. Virtual Empathy. The added value of Virtual Reality in Psychotherapy. https://doi.org/10.1109/CogInfoCom.2018.8639906
[34]
University of Cambridge. 2017. Cambridge Simulation Glasses. Retrieved October 17, 2021 from http://www.inclusivedesigntoolkit.com/csg/csg.html#p30
[35]
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2021. Eye health. Retrieved August 13, 2021 from https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/eye-health/eye-health/contents/how-common-is-visual-impairment
[36]
Callum Parker. 2018. Augmenting Space: Design approaches for making public interactive displays relevant in hyperconnected societies. Ph.D. Dissertation. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.24318.43849
[37]
Callum Parker, Joel Fredericks, Martin Tomitsch, and Soojeong Yoo. 2017. Towards Adaptive Height-Aware Public Interactive Displays. https://doi.org/10.1145/3099023.3099060
[38]
Callum Parker, Martin Tomitsch, Nigel Davies, Nina Valkanova, and Judy Kay. 2020. Foundations for designing public interactive displays that provide value to users. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–12.
[39]
Callum Parker, Martin Tomitsch, and Judy Kay. 2018. Does the public still look at public displays? A field observation of public displays in the wild. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies 2, 2 (2018), 1–24.
[40]
Helen Petrie, Fraser Hamilton, Neil King, and Pete Pavan. 2006. Remote usability evaluations With disabled people, Vol. 2. 1133–1141. https://doi.org/10.1145/1124772.1124942
[41]
Thammathip Piumsomboon, Youngho Lee, Gun Lee, Arindam Dey, and Mark Billinghurst. 2017. Empathic Mixed Reality: Sharing What You Feel and Interacting with What You See. 38–41. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISUVR.2017.20
[42]
D. Poulson, Technology Initiative for Disabled, Elderly People, M. Ashby, S. Richardson, and C. Nicolle. 1996. Userfit: A Practical Handbook on User-centred Design for Assistive Technology. ECSC-EC-EAEC. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Z3JeHQAACAAJ
[43]
Nicola S. Schutte and Emma J. Stilinović. 2017. Facilitating empathy through virtual reality. Motivation and Emotion 41, 6 (01 Dec 2017), 708–712. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-017-9641-7
[44]
Andrew Sears, Jacko Hardie, and Julie A.2009. Human-Computer Interaction: Development Process. CRC Press.
[45]
Don Shin. 2017. Empathy and embodied experience in virtual environment: To what extent can virtual reality stimulate empathy and embodied experience?Computers in Human Behavior 78 (09 2017). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2017.09.012
[46]
Kristen Shinohara and Jacob Wobbrock. 2016. Self-Conscious or Self-Confident? A Diary Study Conceptualizing the Social Accessibility of Assistive Technology. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing 8 (01 2016), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1145/2827857
[47]
Arielle Silverman. 2015. The Perils of Playing Blind: Problems with Blindness Simulation and a Better Way to Teach about Blindness. Journal of Blindness Innovation and Research 5 (01 2015). https://doi.org/10.5241/5-81
[48]
M. Slater, P. Khanna, J. Mortensen, and I. Yu. 2009. Visual Realism Enhances Realistic Response in an Immersive Virtual Environment. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 29, 3 (May 2009), 76–84. https://doi.org/10.1109/MCG.2009.55
[49]
Penny Taylor and Anam Bilgrami. 2010. Clear Focus - The Economic Impact of Vision Loss in Australia in 2009. Technical Report. Vision 2020 Australia, Access Economics, Melbourne.
[50]
Tram Thi Minh Tran and Callum Parker. 2020. Designing Exocentric Pedestrian Navigation for AR Head Mounted Displays. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–8.
[51]
Joyce Thomas and Deana McDonagh. 2013. Empathic design: Research strategies. The Australasian medical journal 6 (01 2013), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.4066/AMJ.2013.1575
[52]
Martin Tomitsch, Cara Wrigley, Madeleine Borthwick, Naseem Ahmadpour, Jessica Frawley, A. Baki Kocaballi, Claudia Núñez-Pascheco, Karla Straker, and Lian Loke. 2018. Design. Think. Make. Break. Repeat: a handbook of methods. Bis Publishers.
[53]
University of Michigan. 2017. Digital Signage: Accessibility Considerations. Retrieved July 10, 2019 from https://documentation.its.umich.edu/digital-signage/digital-signage-accessibility-considerations
[54]
Austin van Loon, Jeremy Bailenson, Jamil Zaki, Joshua Bostick, and Robb Willer. 2018. Virtual reality perspective-taking increases cognitive empathy for specific others. PLOS ONE 13 (08 2018), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0202442
[55]
Tetsuya Watanabe, Toshimitsu Yamaguchi, and Kazunori Minatani. 2015. Advantages and Drawbacks of Smartphones and Tablets for Visually Impaired People —— Analysis of ICT User Survey Results ——. IEICE Transactions on Information and Systems E98.D (04 2015), 922–929. https://doi.org/10.1587/transinf.2014EDP7317
[56]
Mirjam West, Onur Yildirim, Aislinn E. Harte. Adam Ramram, Nicholas W. Fleury, and Vicente Carabias. 2019. Enhancing Citizen Participation through Serious Games in Virtual Reality. REAL CORP 2019 – IS THIS THE REAL WORLD? Perfect Smart Cities vs. Real Emotional Cities., 881–888.
[57]
Bob G. Witmer and Michael J. Singer. 1998. Measuring Presence in Virtual Environments: A Presence Questionnaire. Presence: Teleoper. Virtual Environ. 7, 3 (June 1998), 225–240. https://doi.org/10.1162/105474698565686
[58]
Soojeong Yoo, Phillip Gough, and Judy Kay. 2020. Embedding a VR game studio in a sedentary workplace: use, experience and exercise benefits. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–14.
[59]
Soojeong Yoo, Tristan Heywood, Lie Ming Tang, Bob Kummerfeld, and Judy Kay. 2017. Towards a long term model of virtual reality exergame exertion. In Proceedings of the 25th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization. 247–255.
[60]
Soojeong Yoo and Judy Kay. 2016. VRun: running-in-place virtual reality exergame. In Proceedings of the 28th Australian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction. 562–566.
[61]
Soojeong Yoo, Sunkyung Kim, and Youngho Lee. 2020. Learning by Doing: Evaluation of an Educational VR Application for the Care of Schizophrenic Patients. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1–6.
[62]
Michelle Zagar and Scott Baggarly. 2010. Low Vision Simulator Goggles in Pharmacy Education. American journal of pharmaceutical education 74 (06 2010). https://doi.org/10.5688/aj740583

Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Situating Empathy in HCI/CSCW: A Scoping ReviewProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36870528:CSCW2(1-37)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
  • (2023)Experiencing Virtual Reality for Perspective-Taking of Blind and Visually Impaired LearnersSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.4595370Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)Understanding Challenges and Opportunities in Body Movement Education of People who are Blind or have Low VisionProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608409(1-19)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. Evaluating Virtual Reality as a Tool for Empathic Modelling of Vision Impairment: Insights from a simulated public interactive display experience

      Recommendations

      Comments

      Information & Contributors

      Information

      Published In

      cover image ACM Other conferences
      OzCHI '21: Proceedings of the 33rd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
      November 2021
      361 pages
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 15 September 2022

      Permissions

      Request permissions for this article.

      Check for updates

      Author Tags

      1. Empathic design
      2. Empathic modelling
      3. Inclusive design
      4. Public interactive displays
      5. Virtual Reality
      6. Vision impairment

      Qualifiers

      • Research-article
      • Research
      • Refereed limited

      Conference

      OzCHI '21
      OzCHI '21: 33rd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
      November 30 - December 2, 2021
      VIC, Melbourne, Australia

      Acceptance Rates

      Overall Acceptance Rate 362 of 729 submissions, 50%

      Contributors

      Other Metrics

      Bibliometrics & Citations

      Bibliometrics

      Article Metrics

      • Downloads (Last 12 months)63
      • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)6
      Reflects downloads up to 05 Mar 2025

      Other Metrics

      Citations

      Cited By

      View all
      • (2024)Situating Empathy in HCI/CSCW: A Scoping ReviewProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction10.1145/36870528:CSCW2(1-37)Online publication date: 8-Nov-2024
      • (2023)Experiencing Virtual Reality for Perspective-Taking of Blind and Visually Impaired LearnersSSRN Electronic Journal10.2139/ssrn.4595370Online publication date: 2023
      • (2023)Understanding Challenges and Opportunities in Body Movement Education of People who are Blind or have Low VisionProceedings of the 25th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility10.1145/3597638.3608409(1-19)Online publication date: 22-Oct-2023
      • (2023)Empathic Experiences of Visual Conditions with Virtual RealityInteractive Storytelling10.1007/978-3-031-47658-7_15(168-180)Online publication date: 11-Nov-2023

      View Options

      Login options

      View options

      PDF

      View or Download as a PDF file.

      PDF

      eReader

      View online with eReader.

      eReader

      HTML Format

      View this article in HTML Format.

      HTML Format

      Figures

      Tables

      Media

      Share

      Share

      Share this Publication link

      Share on social media