Inclusive metaverse services: how desired self-identity shapes service evaluations and disability acceptance

This paper describes a proposed framework for a collaborative design in a virtual environment. The framework consists of components that support a true collaborative design in a real-time 3D virtual environment. In support of the proposed framework, a prototype application is being developed. The authors envision the framework will have, but not limited to the following features: (1) real-time manipulation of 3D objects across the network, (2) support for multi-designer activities and information access, (3) co-existence within same virtual space, etc. This paper also discusses a proposed testing to determine the possible benefits of a collaborative design in a virtual environment over other forms of collaboration, and results from a pilot test.

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments (VEs) are collaboration platforms where group members are represented as avatars and interact in a customizable simulated world. Research from cognitive psychology has shown that it is possible to manipulate nonconscious cognition and behavior through “priming,” a well-known phenomenon in which words and images are used to activate desired concepts in participants’ minds. Our goal in this was to investigate whether priming during the task execution (called contextual priming) using 3D objects in the VE can improve brainstorming performance. To investigate this, we conducted two studies. The first used priming objects specifically related to the task topic and the second used priming objects related to creativity, in general. Compared to VEs without 3D priming objects, our results show that when groups brainstormed in the VEs designed with 3D priming objects, they generated better quality ideas as well as a greater breadth and depth of ideas. Thus, the 3D priming stimuli incorporated in a VE enhances brainstorming, which indicates that the design of VE has a direct effect on team brainstorming performance. Our results also show that target concept activation and task absorption act as the underlying mechanisms, partially mediating the relationship between the design of the VE (i.e., the presence or absence of priming objects) and performance outcomes.

Objective To discuss risk factors of after-stroke disability, and to analyze the patients' acceptance of this disability and influencing factors. Methods By random sampling, 650 cases of cerebral apoplexy patients, treated in Daqing Oilfield General Hospital from February 2014 to August 2016, were selected, with their general data and scores of disability degree collected by a self-designed questionnaire. The acceptance of disability scale (AODS) was used for scaling the patients' acceptance of this disease. Risk factors for after-stroke disability and influencing factors of the patients' acceptance of the disability were analyzed by single factor analysis and multiple stepwise regression analysis. Results There was no statistical difference of incidence of disability among patients with different gender, family history, or whether with hyperlipidemia (χ2=0.729, 1.900, 0.007; P>0.05) ; there were statistical difference of incidence of disability among patients with different ages, educational degree, whether with diabetes, or whether with high blood pressure (χ2=7.350, 10.321, 8.365, 7.694; P<0.01) . Age, diabetes and educational degree were independent risk factors of after-stroke disability. In this study, total AODS scores of the 104 patients with disability were (76.65±14.32) points, with a moderate accept percentage 85.6%. There was statistical difference of AODS scores of patients with different ages, educational degree, whether with diabetes or whether with high blood pressure (t/F=4.153, 4.478, 7.893, 8.015; P<0.05) . Age, educational degree, whether with high blood pressure or whether with diabetes were factors influencing AODS of disabled patients after stroke. Conclusions Age, diabetes, educational degree are independent risk factors of disability after stroke, according to which, targeted positive prevention should be taken. Patients with different circumstances should be intervened psychologically according to their AODS scores, which helps to improve their acceptance of disability after stroke. Key words: Stroke; Risk factors; Disability; Acceptance of disability

The recent acceleration of digital transformation for private and public organizations pushes them to rethink how to leverage digital technologies to improve productivity while providing new experiences to both their internal and external stakeholders. A central element of the digital transformation process is the development of digital product and service platforms that act both as enablers of business innovation and as instruments for the scaling of new products and services for consumers and businesses. Digital service platforms allow organizations to experiment with new ways of creating value by simplifying and accelerating processes that can heavily ease day-to-day activities in product design and development, supply chain and production, marketing and sales, internal and external communication, and privacy safeguarding.

The ever-increasing power of computers and hardware rendering systems has, to date, primarily motivated the creation of visually rich and perceptually realistic virtual environment (VE) applications. Comparatively very little effort has been expended on the user interaction components of VEs. As a result, VE user interfaces are often poorly designed and are rarely evaluated with users. Although usability engineering is a newly emerging facet of VE development, user-centered design and usability evaluation in VEs as a practice still lags far behind what is needed. This paper presents a structured, iterative approach for the user-centered design and evaluation of VE user interaction. This approach consists of the iterative use of expert heuristic evaluation, followed by formative usability evaluation, followed by summative evaluation. We describe our application of this approach to a real-world VE for battlefield visualization, describe the resulting series of design iterations, and present evidence that this approach provides a cost-effective strategy for assessing and iteratively improving user interaction design in VEs. This paper is among the first to report applying an iterative, structured, user-centered design and evaluation approach to VE user interaction design.

Virtual reality is a powerful tool for industrial applications. The article at hand addresses designers of industrial virtual environments. It summarizes key aspects to design immersive and coherent virtual environments. Furthermore, relevant influencing factors for a high quality virtual environment and tools to quantify this quality are presented. So far, a methodology to design, evaluate, and transfer knowledge from virtual environments into reality has been missing and is of high value for industrial applications. The proposed methodical approach includes the steps application analysis, technology selection and integration, design of virtual environment, evaluation of simulator quality, as well as discussion of the real-world validity. The method is shown on the example of a virtual human-robot working cell used to analyze the human perception of robot behavior during mutual assembly processes. The quality of the virtual environment is evaluated to be adequate for those purposes and the transfer of knowledge gained in virtuality on a corresponding real-world application is discussed. To the best of our knowing a system like the presented one, including full-body tracking, finger tracking, a virtual avatar and a head-mounted display has not been used for industrial use cases and human-robot cooperation before.

Digital library is an extensible knowledge network system based on the network environment. As a new computer model, cloud computing provides an application service platform that can integrate digital information resources of all libraries and process distributed digital resources, information integration and reconfiguration in order to best meet the user's needs for library services. This article follows the ideas and methods of software engineering, and designs the overall framework, storage framework, and security framework of a cloud-based digital library service platform to provide a complete solution for the construction of a digital library service platform, and put forward corresponding construction countermeasures to improve the scientificity and practicability of digital library service platform construction. The research results of this article are in line with the cloud service model of today's social development and play an important role in promoting the service reform of digital libraries. Digital book services under the cloud environment have become an academic center for the dissemination and processing of modern human knowledge.

To facilitate innovation of value-enabling IT services in a service ecosystem, digital service platforms are needed. However, existing service platforms, neither fully inscribes premises of the service dominant logic, nor the principles of open innovation. Seldom are they digital. We argue that there is a lack of consolidated normative theory of how to design digital service innovation platforms. This is problematic, because it hampers actors in service ecosystems to combine and advance their capabilities. To this end, researchers and practitioners have jointly designed and evaluated a digital service platform using Action Design Research methodology. Accordingly, the overall purpose of this paper is to present intermediate results from the evaluation of the digital service platform and to contribute nascent design principles enabling researchers and practitioners to leverage other instances of purposive digital service platforms.

Virtual reality environments have many potential applications in medicine, including surgical training, tele-operated robotic surgery, assessment and rehabilitation of behavioural and neurological disorders and diagnosis, therapy and rehabilitation of physical disabilities. Although there is much potential for the use of immersive virtual reality environments in clinical applications, there are problems which could limit their ultimate usability. Some users have experienced side-effects during and after exposure to virtual reality environments. The symptoms include ocular problems, disorientation and balance disturbances, and nausea. Susceptibility to side-effects can be affected by age, ethnicity, experience, gender and physical fitness, as well as the characteristics of the display, the virtual environment and the tasks. The characteristics of the virtual reality system have also been shown to affect the ability of users to perform tasks in a virtual environment. Many of these effects can be attributed to delays between the sampling of head and limb positions and the presentation of an appropriate image on the display. The introduction of patients to virtual reality environments, for assessment, therapy or rehabilitation, raises particular safety and ethical issues. Patients exposed to virtual reality environments for assessment and rehabilitation may have disabilities which increase their susceptibility to certain side-effects. Special precautions therefore need to be taken to ensure the safety and effectiveness of such virtual reality applications. These precautions include minimisation of possible side-effects at the design stage. Factors are identified which are likely to affect the incidence of side-effects during and after exposures, and which need to be understood in order to minimise undesirable consequences. There is also a need for the establishment of protocols for monitoring and controlling exposures of patients to virtual reality environments. Issues are identified which need to be included in such protocols.

Current mechanical kinematic animation can’t satisfy the requirements of Virtual Environment (VE) based design. The kinematic animation design in VE development platform does not have high level models and mechanisms, the interactive animation designs and developments are very difficult and time consuming. For these reasons, this paper proposes an innovative method for interactive kinematic animation design and development in VE, including dynamic runtime model and execution algorithm for interactive animation. A complex mechanical kinematic mechanism, that is, the engine assembly, is built to validate the animation technology introduced in this paper.

BackgroundIt is crucial to use innovative tools to gain clinical reasoning skills through experiential learning in pharmacy education, and one of the most effective tools used in this is virtual reality. However, the lack of research that empirically demonstrates the instructional principles of virtual environment design, especially in the clinical setting, has resulted in a significant gap in the current literature.AimIn this study, it was aimed to determine the instructional design principles of a virtual environment for the clinical pharmacy.MethodThe study was conducted as a design‐based research. The data of the study related to three components of the developed virtual reality environment in pharmacy education (VRPE). These components, scenario development interface‐scenario development interface, virtual environment, and scenario, were collected through interviews, observation, document review, and a system usability scale. Instructional design principles for the VRPE were determined through analysis of the collected data.ResultsThe prominent instructional design principles of the VRPE were revealed as immersion, interaction, diversity, flow, aesthetics‐ergonomic‐universal design, informing, and retest availability. The significance of the study was the adoption of a holistic perspective in the design of a virtual reality environment for pharmacy education. In addition, one of the most critical features of the study was eliminating the expertise barrier in virtual environment design. Thus, it was concluded that the VRPE is an extraordinary tool that can be used for pharmacy education to promote experiential learning.

Slot machines are one of the most played games by players suffering from gambling disorder. New technologies like immersive Virtual Reality (VR) offer more possibilities to exploit erroneous beliefs in the context of gambling. Recent research indicates a higher risk potential when playing a slot machine in VR than on desktop. To continue this investigation, we evaluate the effects of providing different degrees of embodiment, i.e., minimal and full embodiment. The avatars used for the full embodiment further differ in their appearance, i.e., they elicit a high or a low socio-economic status. The virtual environment (VE) design can cause a potential influence on the overall gambling behavior. Thus, we also embed the slot machine in two different VEs that differ in their emotional design: a colorful underwater playground environment and a virtual counterpart of our lab. These design considerations resulted in four different versions of the same VR slot machine: 1) full embodiment with high socio-economic status, 2) full embodiment with low socio-economic status, 3) minimal embodiment playground VE, and 4) minimal embodiment laboratory VE. Both full embodiment versions also used the playground VE. We determine the risk potential by logging gambling frequency as well as stake size, and measuring harm-inducing factors, i.e., dissociation, urge to gamble, dark flow, and illusion of control, using questionnaires. Following a between groups experimental design, 82 participants played for 20 game rounds one of the four versions. We recruited our sample from the students enrolled at the University of Würzburg. Our safety protocol ensured that only participants without any recent gambling activity took part in the experiment. In this comparative user study, we found no effect of the embodiment nor VE design on neither the gambling frequency, stake sizes, nor risk potential. However, our results provide further support for the hypothesis of the higher visual angle on gambling stimuli and hence the increased emotional response being the true cause for the higher risk potential.

Objective To investigate the status of acceptance of disability and posttraumatic growth among patients with permanent colostomy and to analyze the correlation between them. Methods From October 2016 to October 2017, we selected 189 patients with permanent colostomy at three ClassⅢ Grade A hospitals in Harbin City as subjects by convenience sampling. All of the patients were investigated with the general information questionnaire, Acceptance of Disability Scale (AODS) and Posttraumatic Growth Inventory (PTGI) . 189 questionnaires were distributed and 172 valid questionnaires were returned. Results The total scores of acceptance of disability and posttraumatic growth of 172 patients with permanent colostomy were (78.46±9.66) and (66.74±11.22) respectively. The correlation analysis showed the acceptance of disability had a positive correlation with post-traumatic growth among patients with permanent colostomy (r=0.448, P<0.01) . Conclusions Patients with permanent colostomy have an intermediate level of posttraumatic growth closely related with acceptance of disability. Health care providers should explore effective intervention to improve patients' acceptance of disability so as to promote the post-traumatic growth. Key words: Colostomy; Acceptance of disability; Posttraumatic growth; Correlation analysis; Investigation

Due to the difficulty of pipeline design and layout for complex mechanical products, a virtual reality-based method is proposed for pipeline design and routing in virtual environment. A parameter database is established for geometric design of pipelines according to their basic parameters in 3D models. Controlled-points and controlled-vectors are introduced to determine the position and direction of pipelines. Dynamic adjusting algorithm for straight pipelines and elbow pipelines in virtual environment are implemented respectively to joint and layout pipelines according to surrounding environment and features. A pipeline oriented virtual assembly environment system is developed, and some examples are given to demonstrate its function and validation.

The integration of virtual reality and computer-aided design technologies is a revolution in the history of design. Virtual environments provide more information and feedback to designers than traditional desktop systems. Such information and feedback include immersive and stereoscopic visual information, haptic or tactile feedback, and auditory feedback. The multimodal information is in general rather intuitive and inspiring to designers, resulting in globally enhanced insights, creativity and productivity. Moreover, multimodal virtual reality technology excels at the visualization of complex scene and information, which is particularly difficult in desktop systems. In this talk, we present our recent research achievements on: (1) online synthesis of multi-channel visual signals, and the construction of multimodal virtual environments; (2) fusion of graphic, image and video signals in augmented reality environments; (3) synthesis of visual and haptic signals in virtual assembly applications; (4) virtual design and simulation in multimodal virtual environments, including surface deformation based on hand gesture interface, virtual assembly with haptic interactions, virtual maintenance in augmented reality environments; (5) demonstrations and examples.