Paper Review: Situating Cognition within the Virtual World

#Title#

Situating Cognition within the Virtual World

#Authors#

Paul R. Smart and Katia Sycara

#Venue#

6th International Conference on Applied Human Factors and Ergonomics (AHFE 2015) and the 

Affiliated Conferences, AHFE 2015

#DOI#

http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/376733/1/AHFE_2015.pdf

#Abstract#

Cognitive architectures and virtual environments have a long history of use within the cognitive science community. Few studies, however, have sought to combine the use of these technologies to support computational studies into embodied, extended, situated and distributed (EESD) cognition. Here, we explore the extent to which the ACT-R cognitive architecture and the Unity game engine can be used for these purposes. A range of issues are discussed including the respective responsibilities that the cognitive architecture and game engine have for the implementation of specific processes, the extent to which the representational and computational capabilities of cognitive architectures are suited to the modeling of EESD cognitive systems, and the extent to which the kind of embodiment seen in the case of so-called ‘embodied virtual agents’ resembles that seen in the case of real-world bio-cognitive systems. These issues are likely to inform the focus of future research efforts concerning the integrative use of virtual environments and cognitive architectures for the computational modeling and simulation of EESD cognitive processes. 

#Comments#

An interesting little paper covering some issues around integrating Unity with present situated cognition systems such as ACT-R  http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/ and THESEUS - their own simulation framework.

Not much theory here, but worth noting regarding the utility of processing visual features in the environment into abstract representations suitable for ACT-R to process.

Interesting observation, they quote Clark "Clark [1] thus distinguishes between ‘mere embodiment’, ‘basic embodiment’ and ‘profound embodiment’. He suggests that profound embodiment is primarily a feature of bio-cognitive systems, and that this form of embodiment is unlike that seen in the case of synthetic agents."

My point here is that, this applies to humans in the space.  Using certain interfaces should increase this level of embodiment.  A good idea would be to create a scale for this, so that researchers can assess the experience of embodiment, to maybe predict responses in humans.

They note the difficulty of integrating EESD forms of situated cognition into games systems.  Which I find interesting.  Why don't they form embodied scripts in the environments which are trained to interact with each other in a similar way to models of situated cognition, regarding our bodily movements?  Sounds like PhD project to me.  Surely these have been used in robotics, so should translate to a computational architecture easily, and, with Unity's nice scripting setup, should be able to be executed relatively easily, but only on a powerful machine. :-)

#ImportantRefs#

1. Clark, A. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension, Oxford University Press, New York, New York, USA, 2008

2. Smart, P. R., Scutt, T., Sycara, K., Shadbolt, N. R. in: Turner, J. O., Nixon, M., Bernardet, U., DiPaola, S. (Eds.) Integrating Cognitive Architectures into Virtual Character Design, IGI Global, Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA, in press.

Paper: Evidence that virtual worlds improve business process elicitation

Our paper "Virtual Business Role-play: Leveraging Familiar Environments to Prime Stakeholder Memory during Process Elicitation," has been accepted for CaISE 2015 in Stockholm, Sweden.  This paper is a product of an Honours thesis by my student Joel Harman, in collaboration with Stefanie Rinderle-Ma (Uni. Vienna), Daniel Johnson (QUT) and Udo Kannengiesser (Metasonic GmbH).  

The paper is stored here at QUT eprints, contact me on r.brown@qut.edu.au if you want a pdf copy.

Abstract. Business process models have traditionally been an effective way of examining business practices to identify areas for improvement. While common information gathering approaches are generally efficacious, they can be quite time consuming and have the risk of developing inaccuracies when information is forgotten or incorrectly interpreted by analysts. In this study, the potential of a role-playing approach for process elicitation and specification has been examined. This method allows stakeholders to enter a virtual world and role-play actions as they would in reality. As actions are completed, a model is automatically developed, removing the need for stakeholders to learn and understand a modelling grammar. Empirical data obtained in this study suggests that this approach may not only improve both the number of individual process task steps remembered and the correctness of task ordering, but also provide a reduction in the time required for stakeholders to model a process view.

Not only is this is a great achievement by Joel, CaISE is a very competitive conference, but the preliminary evidence is very encouraging.  Virtual worlds do indeed work well as a process elicitation tool, especially, we believe, for naive stakeholders.

Ross

Review: Presence and Memory: Immersive Virtual Reality Effects on Cued Recall

#Title#

Presence and Memory: Immersive Virtual Reality Effects on Cued Recall

#Authors#

Jakki Bailey, Jeremy N. Bailenson, Andrea Stevenson Won, June Flora and K. Carrie Armel

#Venue#

Stanford Tech Report - only Preliminary Results

#DOI#

http://vhil.stanford.edu/pubs/2012/bailey-ispr-presence-memory.pdf

#Abstract#

Presence, the psychological experience of “being there,” is an important construct to consider when investigating the impact of mediated experiences on cognition. Though several studies have investigated the influence of presence on the memory of virtual environments (i.e. recalling virtual objects), few have tested how presence impacts memory on subsequent tasks in the physical world. Thirty-three male and female college students were exposed to a pro-environmental message in an immersive virtual environment. After the virtual reality treatment, they completed a memory task in the physical world regarding pro-environmental principles. Results showed a significant negative association between levels of reported presence in the virtual world and the number of correct water conservation examples remembered in the physical world. These findings suggest that media technology that induces presence can influence an individual’s ability to remember information in the physical world. Possible theoretical explanations of how presence may negatively impact cognition are presented.

#Comments#

Here they seek to relate a specific component of VW to memory, viz., presence or subjective levels of being there, with memory recall in cueing experiments.

They use a nVisor SX111 HMD (NVIS, Reston, VA) with a resolution of 2056 x 1024 and a refresh rate of 120 frames per second to perform the work, framerate is very high compared to Oculus, which may improve presence?  Need to keep this in mind.

Experiment context is that the task involved an environmental narrative, so emotional resonance with such a concept could be a factor here as well.  Does it work the same with other more humdrum narratives?

They also look at free recall and cued recall, so the memory tests are of a different type in each case to cover possibly differing memory processes.

Useful presence scale for assessing level of presence: "A five- item scaled was adapted from presence scales used in previous studies (Bailenson and Yee, 2007; Ahn & Bailenson, 2011; Nowak & Biocca, 2003)."

Note they get a NEGATIVE correlation with memory and presence (n=33).  This needs to be considered for my experiments.  It would be interesting to see if a comparison with desktop levels of presence will map to my other results with Unity and Metasonic?!?!?

Negative correlation is potentially explained by:

1. Vivid inputs from VW could drain cognitive capacity to remember items.

2. Arousal - high levels of emotion - limit memory tasks.

3. People who report high levels of presence actually remember things using different processes, and so are actually a different subject group, so could be a confounding factor that needs to be controlled.

4. Only correlational experiment, no details on causation, so needs further work.

An interesting result, bring out many research questions to answer on the relationship of VW elements with cognitive processes.

#ImportantRefs#

Lin, Duh, Parker, Abi-Rached, & Furness, 2002
Mania & Chalmers, 2001
Dinh, Walker, Song, Kobayashi, and Hodges 1999 

Review: Virtually True: Children’s Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality

#Title#

Virtually True: Children’s Acquisition of False Memories in Virtual Reality

#Authors#

KATHRYN Y. SEGOVIA and JEREMY N. BAILENSON

#Venue#

Journal of Media Psychology, 12:371–393, 2009

#DOI#

DOI: 10.1080/15213260903287267

#Abstract#

Previous work on human memory has shown that prompting participants with false events and self-relevant information via different types of media such as narratives, edited 2-dimensional images, and mental imagery creates false memories. This study tested a new form of media for studying false memory formation: Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET). Using this tool, we examined how memory was affected by viewing dynamic simulations of avatars performing novel actions. In the study, 55 preschool and elementary children were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 memory prompt conditions (idle, mental imagery, IVET simulation of another child, or IVET simulation of self). Each child was questioned 3 different times: once before the memory prompt, once immediately after the memory prompt, and once approximately 5 days after the memory prompt. Results showed that preschool children were equally likely to develop false memories regardless of memory prompt condition. But, for elementary children, the mental imagery and IVET self conditions caused significantly more false memories than the idle condition. Implications regarding the use of digital media in courtroom settings, clinical therapy settings, entertainment, and other applications are discussed.

#Comments#

Interesting, another acronym - Immersive Virtual Environment Technology (IVET).  I don't like it, prefer 3D virtual worlds.  But I guess the use of immersive is pertinent here.

Note here that experiments were performed with children, not adults.  They state that the vulnerability of preschool children to suggestive influences is very high, so may not apply to adults.

They also bring up the source monitoring judgement as an experimental task; viz. the identification of sources of memories, and how it is actually poorly managed on the part of the brain.

They also state that narratives are commonly used to test false memories.  Are these analogous to workflows, and the place of false memories in elicitation?!?!?

Conjecture: Is the imposition of a process a form of false memory imputation over the actuality of the work processes in an enterprise?  Or, for any elicitation process for that matter?  Thus the more real the stimuli, the more likely to get the truth?  Possible research question here.

They note that narrative information previously used in experiments is not that rich.  The media richness theory suggests a greater effect from IVETs.

Interesting passage:

"In another set of studies, college students heard simple action statements and in some conditions either performed or imagined the action as well (Goff & Roediger, 1998). In a second session, participants imagined performing actions (some of which came from the first session and some of which were new) either one, three, or five times. In the third session, participants were asked to identify actions only if they had occurred in the first session and, if identified, to tell whether the action statement had been carried out, imagined, or merely heard. The main finding was that increasing the number of imaginings during the second session caused participants to later remember that they had performed an action during the first session when in fact the participant had not."

Note the influence of imagination over the actual memory of a performed event.  This seems to hold across familiar and non-familiar actions - relevant to knowledge elicitation.  If you get people to imagine badly, they will report badly.

They also note the power of imaging past actions; very close and personal stimuli and feedback interactions in the person's head.  May be part of a feedback loop.

Another key factor here:

"We believe that the manipulation explored by Strange and colleagues (2008) is important and would like to offer a complementary hypothesis to explain the reported effect. We propose that personalized photographs were more powerful stimuli because they fulfilled the personal focus criterion in- volved in media richness. The personal focus involved in the media richness criteria is influential in the memory process because it causes humans to self-reference; people encode more attributes when they are engaged in self-referent processing than other types of processing (Symons & Johnson, 1997). The greater the amount of information encoded the more similar the memory becomes to a memory of a physical world event, and the greater the likelihood that a source monitoring error will occur."

This is the key here to me, not regarding false memories, but regarding actual memories.  Such an idea lends further weight to the fact that elicitation is enhanced by personal recollection, but may be further confounded if the personal recollection has edits introduced.  So, we have a mechanism here for the noise involved in recollection, especially that which is false, not just knocked out due to functional problems, such as random memory lapses.

They note that use of media may provide a low-cognitive organisation environment, compared to abstract representations, such as text.  This may lead, in fact, to more inaccuracy, as errors are amplified by the nature of the immersion involved.

Their summation indicates that children are affected by false narratives, even in a passive viewing, non-interactive manner, with the IVET.  This indicates a predictable effect on people of experiencing false stories in IVETs, and leads to the conclusion that such environments should be used with caution, but that they hold promise in enabling better recall, if the stimuli are accurate.

#ImportantRefs#

Boast: You know you have the best job in the world...

...when your employer buys five Oculus Rifts for you to use. :-)

Ross

Paper: Augmenting and assisting model elicitation tasks with 3D virtual world context metadata

Just had a paper I have written with Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, Simone Kriglstein and Sonja Kabicher-Fuchs accepted for COOPIS 2014.  Paper is found here.

This is the fourth paper I have had published this year with Simone, part of a productive collaboration with my Austrian colleagues.

Abstract. Accurate process model elicitation continues to be a time consuming task, requiring skill on the part of the interviewer to extract explicit and tacit process information from the interviewee. Many errors occur in this elicitation stage that would be avoided by better activity recall, more consistent specification methods and greater engagement in the elicitation process by interviewees. Theories of situated cognition indicate that interactive 3D representations of real work environments engage and prime the cognitive state of the viewer. In this paper, our major contribution is to augment a previous process elicitation methodology with virtual world context metadata, drawn from a 3D simulation of the workplace. We present a conceptual and formal approach for representing this contextual metadata, integrated into a process similarity measure that provides hints for the business analyst to use in later modelling steps. Finally, we conclude with examples from two use cases to illustrate the potential abilities of this approach.

Ross

Paper Review: On the Problem of Predicting Real World Characteristics from Virtual Worlds

#Title#

On the Problem of Predicting Real World Characteristics from Virtual Worlds

#Authors#

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, Cuihua Shen, Jaideep Srivastava and Noshir Contractor

#Venue#

Predicting Real World Behaviors from Virtual World Data, 

Muhammad Aurangzeb Ahmad, Cuihua Shen, Jaideep Srivastava, Noshir Contractor Editors,
Springer Verlag

#DOI#

DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-07142-8

#Abstract#

Abstract Availability of massive amounts of data about the social and behavioral characteristics of a large subset of the population opens up new possibilities that allow researchers to not only observe people’s behaviors in a natural, rather than artificial, environment but also conduct predictive modeling of those behaviors and characteristics. Thus an emerging area of study is the prediction of real world characteristics and behaviors of people in the offline or “real” world based on their behaviors in the online virtual worlds. We explore the challenges and opportunities in the emerging field of prediction of real world characteristics based on people’s virtual world characteristics, i.e., what are the major paradigms in this field, what are the limitations in current predictive models, limitations in terms of generalizability, etc. Lastly, we also address the future challenges and avenues of research in this area.

#Comments#

They describe the ideas behind the "Mapping Principle," and that this mapping between virtual and real behaviours cannot necessarily be assume to hold for all cases.  

Representations in different worlds may change the results; not much of a problem for me due to lack of need for non-representative avatars, but may impact on fidelity of representation arguments for identification with avatars.

Configuration of the world influences the nature of the mapping, as the pvp and pve tasks may change levels of aggression or cooperation in the VW or game.

They cite the "Proteus Effect," behaviours are affected by the appearance and intended nature of the avatar.  Could this be used to empathise with your boss or underling in an organisation in BPM?!?  Could be exploited in a training manner.  Maybe it brings out perceptions of what another job entails, so that perceptions of roles can be tested.

They bring out the difference in using data to drive the notion of theorising about behaviour; reduces reliance on a priori concepts about behaviours.

They suggest to augment data logging with surveys, in order to determine other states outside of the game to be included in the modelling; straight forward but has to be said.  Remotely logging people does not provide context with regards to their behaviours.

Generalisation across virtual worlds is still an unaddressed problem.

They note that people may lie when answering surveys, which can be uncovered by log data, eg. time spent playing games.  But this is the same for every scenario, one imagines, especially with social repercussions. 

They suggest actually using the worlds before testing them; in some ways a classic case of simulating your experiment before you actually carry it out.  They suggest a minimum time of world use before the research can be published,  and suggest it should be enforced at conferences at in journals.

Case studies:

Economics - virtual world economic patterns commute to real world patterns eg. Castronova.  A black market exists for virtual money.

Epidemiology - citation of the Corrupted Blood incident in WOW.  Spread of disease was similar to human real viruses, including remote location commencement and travelling escaping people bringing the plague to the other regions.  They note that the cost of infection is trivial compared to real life, thus behaviours are different; bringing up a rationale cost benefit analysis model as a basis for action.

Deviant Clandestine Behaviours - this has a strong mapping due to social factors in being found out so to speak.  Gold farming is noted as a major example in the virtual world cases.  Some behaviours, such as thinning of social networks, have been found to be similar in virtual world and in real world gang examples.

Mentoring - mentoring networks are different from other social networks.  But there is a limited form of mapping to the real world.

They do note that the online worlds allow the testing of hypotheses that are note possible in the real world, but they may not be applicable fully to the real world, as noted in other case studies.

They finish with an interesting comparison of a theory based approach to virtual world behaviour predictive modelling, or a data driven, bottom up modelling approach, based upon data mining for correlations to particular behaviours.

They note that the mapping principle is the overarching assumption in this work, but caution is urged due to the often lack of generalisation between the mapping found in different virtual worlds.

#ImportantRefs#

15. Hall,M.,Frank,E.,Holmes,G.,Pfahringer,B.,Reutemann,P.,Witten,I.H.:TheWEKAdata mining software: an update. ACM SIGKDD Explor. Newsl. 11(1), 10–18 (2009)
16. Johnson, N.F., Xu, C., Zhao, Z., Ducheneaut, N., Yee, N., Tita, G., Hui, P.M.: Human group formation in online guilds and offline gangs driven by a common team dynamic. Phys. Rev. E. 79(6), 066117 (2009)

Info: 3D Virtual Worlds to Save Qld Wallabies!

Attached is a picture of me wearing an Occulus Rift wandering around the (virtual) hills of South-east Queensland. In collaboration with Prof. Kerrie Mengersen@QUT, Justine Murray@CSIRO and Prof Peter Bruza@QUT, we have developed a prototype tool for eliciting expert knowledge from environmental managers using elevation models of natural environments.

Research hypothesis is that the Bayesian wallaby population models will be of a better quality if extracted with greater situational information provided by the interactive virtual world. Normally the process is performed with 2D GIS systems.

Will be testing the prototype soon with environmental experts. Thanks to Kerrie Mengersen, Michael Rosemann and Peter Bruza for the support.  Thanks to the bods at QUT VISER for the usual Star Wars equipment.

BTW, the prototype has been developed by a third year QUT games undergraduate RA, Wesley Heard.

Ross

Video: Virtual World S-BPM Elicitator

Video of S-BPM based virtual world modelling tool developed by my Honours student Joel Harman with the financial assistance of Metasonic, AG - http://www.metasonic.de/

The tool allows a stakeholder to use a 3D representation of their work place to provide activity and message information to create an S-BPM model.

This was presented and tested in focus groups at the S-BPM One conference in Eichstaett over Easter.

Well done Joel! Thanks again to Metasonic for the provision of a scholarship for Joel and travel money to Eichstaett.

Ross

Paper Review: The effect of priming pictures and videos on a question-answer dialog scenario in a virtual environment

#Title#The effect of priming pictures and videos on a question-answer dialog scenario in a virtual environment.
#Authors#Qu, C., Brinkman, W.-P., Wiggers, P., & Heynderickx, I.
#Venue#Presence Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 22(2), 91-109
#Doi#doi:10.1162/PRES_a_00111

#Abstract#

Having a free speech conversation with avatars in a virtual environment can be desirable in
virtual reality applications such as virtual therapy and serious games. However, recognizing and
processing free speech seems too ambitious to realize with the current technology. As an
alternative, pre-scripted conversations with keyword detection can handle a number of
goal-oriented situations as well as some scenarios in which the conversation content is of
secondary importance. This is, for example, the case in virtual exposure therapy for the
treatment of people with social phobia, where conversation is for exposure and anxiety arousal
only. A drawback of pre-scripted dialog is the limited scope of user’s answers. The system cannot
handle a user’s response, which does not match the pre-defined content, other than by providing
a default reply. A new method which uses priming material to restrict the possibility of the
user’s response is proposed in this paper to solve this problem. Two studies were conducted to
investigate whether people can be guided to mention specific keywords with video and/or picture
primings. Study 1 was a two by two experiment in which participants (n = 20) were asked to
answer a number of open questions. Prior to the session, participants watched priming videos or
unrelated videos. During the session, they could see priming pictures or unrelated pictures on a
whiteboard behind the person who asked the questions. Results showed that participants tended
to mention more keywords both with priming videos and pictures. Study 2 shared the same
experimental setting but was carried out in virtual reality instead of in the real world.
Participants (n = 20) were asked to answer questions of an avatar when they were exposed to
priming material before and/or during the conversation session. The same results were found:
the surrounding media content had a guidance effect. Furthermore, when priming pictures
appeared in the environment, people sometimes forgot to mention the content they typically
would mention.

#Comments#

Keyword dialogs with priming as pragmatic solution to NLP short comings.

Seeks to use the virtual world to give an illusion of free will, ironically, primed by visual content.  What does this say about our sense of free will.  Hmmmm.

Useful social phobia application, doe it hold that visual priming will work when obtaining information from experts in the field?  I think it does, due to the obvious priming effect.  If the avatar is an expert, then one can surmise that a person in the world could use the virtual world priming to provoke relevant questions in world, and extract better information from the participant in the interview.

They state they are the first in this place; my work on this topic is a close second! Yay!

VRET is considered as good as "in-vivo"; I prefer the word "in-situ" from my perspective.

They do not seem to be across the latest developments in NLP and speech recog.; their main citation is from 2000!

Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) (Schubert, Friedmann, & Regenbrecht, 2001). can be used to assess immersion levels for effects by oculus rifts etc. with an online database for comparison - NOTE THIS FOR FUTURE WORK!

They have found a significant effect with priming via images and videos - more keywords were mentioned with real setting and with virtual setting.  Results were significant.

Note, their results are with an immersive HMD; need to see if effects transfer to less immersive environments such as laptops, tablets etc.  Would be an interesting experiment.

They note issues with the lack of realism of the virtual world, and its possible noise effect on the differences.  However, one would assume that a poorly modelled world giving a good outcome for this work should indicate that the realism is above threshold for the priming effect.

They found that people still gave common answers to questions, even with the priming effects with videos.  Pictures seemed to suppress common answers from the participants.

#ImportantRefs#

So, from my perspective, this work supports strongly the idea that conversations can be affected by the priming effect of virtual world content.  Thus, I can hypothesise that using virtual worlds for process model elicitation should be positively affected by a representation of the interviewee's workplace.  The expected priming effects should occur.

Slater, M. (2009). Place illusion and plausibility can lead to realistic behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London - Series B: Biological Sciences, 364 (1535), 3549–3557.

Pena, J., Hancock, J. T., & Merola, N. a. (2009, September). The Priming E↵ects of Avatars in Virtual Settings. Communication Research, 36 (6), 838–856.
Schubert, T., Friedmann, F., & Regenbrecht, H. (2001). The Experience of Presence: Factor Analytic Insights. Presence Teleoperators Virtual Environments, 10 (3), 266–281.

Paper: Virtual worlds in Australian and New Zealand higher education : remembering the past, understanding the present and imagining the future

Have had a conference paper accepted along with (ahem) a few other authors who perform virtual worlds research in Australia. The paper will be presented at ascilite 2013, the paper is available here.

Abstract - 3D virtual reality, including the current generation of multi-user virtual worlds, has had a long history of use in education and training, and it experienced a surge of renewed interest with the advent of Second Life in 2003. What followed shortly after were several years marked by considerable hype around the use of virtual worlds for teaching, learning and research in higher education. For the moment, uptake of the technology seems to have plateaued, with academics either maintaining the status quo and continuing to use virtual worlds as they have previously done or choosing to opt out altogether. This paper presents a brief review of the use of virtual worlds in the Australian and New Zealand higher education sector in the past and reports on its use in the sector at the present time, based on input from members of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group. It then adopts a forward-looking perspective amid the current climate of uncertainty, musing on future directions and offering suggestions for potential new applications in light of recent technological developments and innovations in the area.

Ross

Video: Virtual World as a Process Modelling Cultural Probe

This is a video of a virtual world we have developed for eliciting expert information from stakeholders. The intention is that the virtual world prompts the user to remember more about their work processes. Our example shows a sparse visualisation of the University of Vienna Department of Computer Science.  This part of a collaboration with Simone Kriglstein, Sonja Kabicher-Fuchs and Stefanie Rinderle-Ma at the University of Vienna.

The video can be found here.

Ross

Paper: Storyboard augmentation of process model grammars for stakeholder communication

Just had a paper accepted for IVAPP 2014, "Storyboard augmentation of process model grammars for stakeholder communication," coauthored with my colleague Simone Kriglstein from the University of Vienna.  Paper was the product of an Honours (First Class) project by Kathleen Nardella at QUT.  Paper can be found here.

Abstract - Process models are often used to visualize and communicate workflows to involved stakeholders. Unfortunately, process modeling notations can be complex and need specific knowledge to be understood. Storyboards, as a visual language to illustrate workflows as sequences of images, provide natural visualization features that allow for better communication, to provide insight to people from non-process modelling expert domains. This paper proposes a visualization approach using a 3D virtual world environment to visualize storyboards for business process models. A prototype was built to present its applicability via generating output with examples of five major process model patterns and two non-trivial use cases. Illustrative results for the approach show the promise of using a 3D virtual world to visualize complex process models in an unambiguous and intuitive manner.

Ross

Scholarship: (Honours) Virtual Worlds & S-BPM funded by Metasonic

Honours Scholarship available

An Honours Scholarship specific to a project that looks at the use of virtual worlds and related 3D visualisations with Subject-oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM) paradigm is now available, to commence from Jan 2014. The scholarship will provide a living allowance of $13,000.00 per annum. You will get the chance to work with local and international experts and will be exposed to advanced R&D training and development, that can support both an academic or commercial research oriented career path.

Requirements to apply:

1. Completed a Bachelor of IT, Bachelor of Games and Interactive Entertainment, or equivalent, with GPA of at least 5 (on a 7 point scale);

2. High grades of 6 and above in relevant QUT games development units, such as, INB381, INB382, INB383, Interaction Design Units or equivalent from another institution.

Selection Criteria:

1. A genuine interest and aptitude for research;

2. Ability to work as a team and independently;

3. Excellent written and oral communication skills;

4. Sound understanding, as indicated by example projects, of the design and implementation of 3D virtual worlds and related game engine development;

5. Detailed understanding and interest in Interaction Design;

6. Time and project management.

If interested, please email your CV and a statement addressing the selection criteria to Ross Brown (r.brown@qut.edu.au). Applications close on Oct 25^th 2013.

Short Paper: Using natural user interfaces for collaborative process modelling in virtual environments

Just had a short paper accepted for Models and their Role in Collaboration (MoRoCo 2013), 22 September 2013, Paphos, Cyprus.  Submitted version of paper available here. 

Abstract: Modelling business processes for analysis or redesign usually requires the collaboration of many stakeholders. These stakeholders may be spread across locations or even companies, making co-located collaboration costly and difficult to organize. Modern process modelling technologies support remote collaboration but lack support for visual cues used in co-located collaboration. Previously we presented a prototype 3D virtual world process modelling tool that supports a number of visual cues to facilitate remote collaborative process model creation and validation. However, the added complexity of having to navigate a virtual environment and using an avatar for communication made the tool difficult to use for novice users. We now present an evolved version of the technology that addresses these issues by providing natural user interfaces for non-verbal communication, navigation and model manipulation.

Well done Erik!

Ross

Paper: A theoretical basis for using virtual worlds as a personalised process visualisation approach

Have just had a paper written with my PhD student Hanwen Guo, "A theoretical basis for using virtual worlds as a personalised process visualisation approach," accepted for the Human Centred Information Systems (HCIS) workshop at CaISE, 2013.

QUT eprints version is available here.

Abstract: Communication processes are vital in the lifecycle of BPM projects. With this in mind, much research has been performed into facilitating this key component between stakeholders. Amongst the methods used to support this process are personalized process visualisations. In this paper, we review the development of this visualization trend, then, we propose a theoretical analysis framework based upon communication theory. We use this framework to provide theoretical support to the conjecture that 3D virtual worlds are powerful tools for communicating personalised visualisations of processes within a workplace. Meta requirements are then derived and applied, via 3D virtual world functionalities, to generate example visualisations containing personalized aspects, which we believe enhance the process of communcation between analysts and stakeholders in BPM process (re)design activities.

Well done Hanwen!

Ross

Paper: The BPMVE Wunderkammer

Have just had a BPTrends column, "The BPMVE Wunderkammer,"  published with my colleague, Prof. Jan Recker.  QUT ePrint is available here.  Thanks for the opportunity Jan!

Ross

Video: 3D Process Visualisation Configurations

Have just uploaded to Youtube a video of 3D Process Visualisation Configurations.

Video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6Losma61-U.  

Related paper will be coming soon.

Ross

Video: Collaborative BPMN Process Modeller

Have uploaded to Youtube a video of our new 3D collaborative BPMN modelling environment.

Video is available here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYMgI6R4iHs.  

Related research paper is here: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/54174/.

Ross

Paper: Improving Remote Collaborative Process Modelling using Embodiment in 3D Virtual Environments

Our paper "Improving Remote Collaborative Process Modelling using Embodiment in 3D Virtual Environments," by Erik Poppe, Ross Brown, Jan Recker and Daniel Johnson, has been accepted at APCCM 2013.

Abstract: Identifying, modelling and documenting business processes usually  require the collaboration of many stakeholders that may be spread across companies in inter-organizational settings.  While modern process modelling  technologies are beginning to provide a number of features  to support remote, they lack support for visual cues used in co-located collaboration. In this paper,  we  examine the importance of visual cues for collaboration  tasks in collaborative process modelling.   Based on this analysis,  we  present a prototype 3D virtual world process modelling tool that supports a number of visual cues to facilitate remote collaborative process model creation and validation.  We then report on a preliminary analysis of the technology. In conclusion, we proceed to describe the future direction of our research with regards to the theoretical contributions expected from the evaluation of the tool.

Well done Erik!

Ross