NMD news – New Media Design

The appeal of virtual chocolate

By Nadine van der Waal

Virtual Reality (VR) is considered a useful tool within food-related applications. An example is Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy, whereby patients are repetitively exposed to virtual food objects without eating, assuming that this leads to a decrease in their food cravings or anxiety. VR could also be used as a measurement tool for food choices, for example in a Virtual Supermarket. However, it is important to know whether responses to virtual food are similar to responses to real food in order to assess the effectiveness of using VR as a tool for food-related applications. Therefore, I conducted a study — together with Nynke van der Laan, Loes Janssen, Marjolijn Antheunis, and Emiel Culleton — to examine the effects of virtual and real food (vs. non-food) cues on people’s physiological and psychological responses.

Students who participated in the experiment were exposed to four different stimuli: real food, virtual food, real non-food and virtual non-food (see image). Participants were told not to swallow during the one-minute exposure. Physiological responses to the stimuli were measured with respect to the amount of salivation, which participants had to spit out after each exposure, and which was weighed by the experimenter. As an additional psychological response measure, we elicited the participant’s level of craving on a scale from 0 to 100.

The results regarding real food cues were in line with our expectations and resemble those observed in previous studies: exposure to real food leads to stronger cravings and salivation than exposure to non-food. When looking at responses to virtual food cues, we found that psychological responses were similar, such that exposure to virtual food led to higher cravings than exposure to virtual non-food. Nevertheless, the cravings were somewhat weaker after exposure to virtual food, compared to real food. This can be explained in terms of the discrepancies between the experience of virtual food and real food, like the absence of touch and smell in VR.

However, we did not see these similarities in physiological responses between real life and VR for these appetitive stimuli. This was unexpected, as VR is generally known for the ability to elicit strong physiological fear responses, for example when one is exposed to feared stimuli (such as spiders), or arousing stimuli (such as standing on top of a building). It would be interesting to further examine whether physiological virtual food cue responses occur when adding other ‘real-world’ cues, for example smell or touch of food objects.

This study was published in Food Quality and Preference. You can read the full paper here.

Real hands or robotic hands in VR, that’s the question!

Virtual reality (VR) technologies have been shown to be effective for teleoperation, or human operation of a machine at a distance. For instance, the integration of teleoperator and VR technologies allows for more accurate and safe human operation of machinery under high-risk conditions by providing immersive and realistic experiences. Particularly interesting in the body of research on VR-based teleoperators is the finding that rendering realism or human-likeness into the virtual body of a teleoperator seems to contribute to the perceptual illusion that the telerobot’s hands are part of worker’s body. Previous studies have shown that such an illusion improves the controllability of teleoperators and therefore enhances task performance.

However, a recent study by Mincheol Shin, who joined our NMD team this semester as an assistant professor, suggests that a human-like virtual body may not only have positive outcomes when operators carry out high-risk tasks. Although the use of a human-like virtual hand for teleoperation might enhance perceived body ownership of a teleoperator, Mincheol suspected that this may at the same time incur negative effects on workers’ task performance and their intention to use a VR-based teleoperator in the future, as a human-like virtual body may increase the level of perceived risk.

Robotic and human-like virtual hands used in the experiment (Retrieved from Leap Motion)

To research this further, Mincheol and his team compared a robotic and a human-like virtual hand in a virtual factory environment that allows for the teleoperation of a metal press machine in a virtual environment. Natural three-dimensional movement of a virtual hand was rendered using the Leap Motion software development kit (SDK), which allows for the seamless tracking of the forearm and fingers without the use of wearable devices (i.e., gloves). For the rendering of both robotic and human-like virtual hands, the Leap Motion core asset was used.

In the experiment, participants were instructed to put themselves into the shoes of factory workers who operate machinery using a VR-based teleoperator at a distance. In the virtual factory environment, participants were assigned a task that involved grasping raw material and placing it under a metal press machine. After the machine pressed the raw material, participants were to complete the task by grasping the processed material and placing it on a conveyor belt. During the task, participants were interrupted by the sound of an alarm if their hands got trapped in the machine, which indicated failure of the task, after which they had to restart. To manipulate the perceived risk of danger, different pressing intervals were implemented: 3 seconds in the low-risk condition and 1 second in the high-risk condition.

The virtual factory environment developed for the experiment showing the start button (A), the raw material (B), the metal press machine (C) and the conveyor belt situated on the right side of the work desk (D).

Mincheol’s research confirmed his suspicion, as he found that the rendering of realism into a virtual body for VR-based teleoperation paradoxically decreased the workers’ task performance by increasing their perceived risk. In addition, this increase in risk perception was found to reduce the intention to use the VR-based teleoperator in the future. Mincheol’s findings suggest that the enhancement of perceived embodiment in VR-based teleoperation may backfire when the risk of danger is high.

As such, while rendering realism into new media technologies has long been assumed to have positive effects on user’s perceptions, this study demonstrates that realism could backfire depending on situational contexts. To both HCI researchers and UX designers, the findings of this research provide some food for thought with respect to the role of realism in designing new media technologies.

This research was published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior and can be accessed via this link to the paper).

Provocative design essay by Simone Ashby

Simone Ashby, who joined our team of NMD teachers this summer, has co-authored an essay in a very interesting book that was published last month. It will especially appeal to our (former) students who’ve enjoyed the design fiction assignment in the UX Design course (and to anyone who appreciates speculative design in general)!

The book is titled Designing in Dark Times: An Arendtian Lexicon. It is a volume of essays inspired by the revival of interest in Hannah Arendt and edited by Eduardo Staszowski (Parsons School of Design) and Virginia Tassinari (Politecnico di Milano). In her essay, which she wrote together with Julian Hanna, James Auger, and Sónia Matos, Simone wrote on the theme “Common World” — breaking it down for closer analysis into sub-themes such as “Common Time”, “Common Good”, and “Common Market”.

The book is part of a provocative new series, Designing in Dark Times / Radical Thinkers in Design, which is intended to “push at the boundaries of contemporary design thinking, responding to the world’s current and pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges and crises”. Forthcoming titles include Politics of the Everyday by Ezio Manzini and Designs to Reshape Humanity by Ann Light, as well as new editions of Defuturing: A New Design Philosophy by Tony Fry and Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby.

NMD @ DDW

This week is the Dutch Design Week, the biggest design event in Northern Europe.

Nynke van der Laan (associate professor) of the New Media Design lecturer team, gave a talk at the Design Research and Innovation Festival, which is part of the scientific program of the Dutch Design week. She gave a talk about the potential of virtual reality as a scientific measurement tool and as an intervention tool to change eating behavior. The event was well attended by representatives from creative companies, knowledge institutions and (local) governments.