Klen Čopič Pucihar

Nuwan T. Attygalle, Matjaž Kljun, Aaron Quigley et al.

The 'keyword method' is an effective technique for learning vocabulary of a foreign language. It involves creating a memorable visual link between what a word means and what its pronunciation in a foreign language sounds like in the learner's native language. However, these memorable visual links remain implicit in the people's mind and are not easy to remember for a large set of words. To enhance the memorisation and recall of the vocabulary, we developed an application that combines the keyword method with text-to-image generators to externalise the memorable visual links into visuals. These visuals represent additional stimuli during the memorisation process. To explore the effectiveness of this approach we first run a pilot study to investigate how difficult it is to externalise the descriptions of mental visualisations of memorable links, by asking participants to write them down. We used these descriptions as prompts for text-to-image generator (DALL-E2) to convert them into images and asked participants to select their favourites. Next, we compared different text-to-image generators (DALL-E2, Midjourney, Stable and Latent Diffusion) to evaluate the perceived quality of the generated images by each. Despite heterogeneous results, participants mostly preferred images generated by DALL-E2, which was used also for the final study. In this study, we investigated whether providing such images enhances the retention of vocabulary being learned, compared to the keyword method only. Our results indicate that people did not encounter difficulties describing their visualisations of memorable links and that providing corresponding images significantly improves memory retention.

Kayhan Latifzadeh, Luis A. Leiva, Klen Čopič Pucihar et al.

We examined eye and head movements to gain insights into skill development in clinical settings. A total of 24 practitioners participated in simulated baby delivery training sessions. We calculated key metrics, including pupillary response rate, fixation duration, or angular velocity. Our findings indicate that eye and head tracking can effectively differentiate between trained and untrained practitioners, particularly during labor tasks. For example, head-related features achieved an F1 score of 0.85 and AUC of 0.86, whereas pupil-related features achieved F1 score of 0.77 and AUC of 0.85. The results lay the groundwork for computational models that support implicit skill assessment and training in clinical settings by using commodity eye-tracking glasses as a complementary device to more traditional evaluation methods such as subjective scores.

Verena Biener, Travis Gesslein, Daniel Schneider et al.

Virtual Reality (VR) has the potential to support mobile knowledge workers by complementing traditional input devices with a large three-dimensional output space and spatial input. Previous research on supporting VR knowledge work explored domains such as text entry using physical keyboards and spreadsheet interaction using combined pen and touch input. Inspired by such work, this paper probes the VR design space for authoring presentations in mobile settings. We propose PoVRPoint -- a set of tools coupling pen- and touch-based editing of presentations on mobile devices, such as tablets, with the interaction capabilities afforded by VR. We study the utility of extended display space to, for example, assist users in identifying target slides, supporting spatial manipulation of objects on a slide, creating animations, and facilitating arrangements of multiple, possibly occluded, shapes. Among other things, our results indicate that 1) the wide field of view afforded by VR results in significantly faster target slide identification times compared to a tablet-only interface for visually salient targets; and 2) the three-dimensional view in VR enables significantly faster object reordering in the presence of occlusion compared to two baseline interfaces. A user study further confirmed that the interaction techniques were found to be usable and enjoyable.

Daniel Schneider, Verena Biener, Alexander Otte et al.

An increasing number of consumer-oriented head-mounted displays (HMD) for augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) are capable of finger and hand tracking. We report on the accuracy of off-the-shelf VR and AR HMDs when used for touch-based tasks such as pointing or drawing. Specifically, we report on the finger tracking accuracy of the VR head-mounted displays Oculus Quest, Vive Pro and the Leap Motion controller, when attached to a VR HMD, as well as the finger tracking accuracy of the AR head-mounted displays Microsoft HoloLens 2 and Magic Leap. We present the results of two experiments in which we compare the accuracy for absolute and relative pointing tasks using both human participants and a robot. The results suggest that HTC Vive has a lower spatial accuracy than the Oculus Quest and Leap Motion and that the Microsoft HoloLens 2 provides higher spatial accuracy than Magic Leap One. These findings can serve as decision support for researchers and practitioners in choosing which systems to use in the future.