Augmenting the dark: Exploring assistive micro-guidance in sonified mixed reality
Date and time: 26 September 2024, 13:00-14:00 CEST
Speaker: Renan Guarese
Title: Augmenting the dark: Exploring assistive micro-guidance in sonified mixed reality
Where: Digital Futures hub, Osquars Backe 5, floor 2 at KTH main campus
Directions: https://www.digitalfutures.kth.se/contact/how-to-get-here/
OR
Zoom: https://kth-se.zoom.us/j/69560887455
Moderator/Administrator: Mario Romera Vega, marior@kth.se
Abstract: Renan Guarese’s work proposes and promotes next-generation micro-guidance methods for low-visibility and vision-impaired (VI) scenarios. We will showcase a series of user evaluations of spatialized sonification methods rendered as AR in simulated and real-life scenarios. In 2D hand guidance, results outlined that the sound spatiality method had the most promising performance in time taken and distance from the target. When assessing vertical hand guidance in a 3D task, results indicated a significantly higher accuracy for a novel height-to-pitch method.
Finally, a significant disparity was found between VI and sighted people regarding sighted people’s empathy with the VI community. After an AR blindness embodiment experience, sighted people’s empathetic and sympathetic responses towards said community significantly increased. Ultimately, this work evaluated how audio AR can help users who cannot rely on vision to have accurate and safe performances in day-to-day manual tasks.
Bio: Renan Guarese is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Human-Computer Interaction at KTH, specifically working with data visualization in AR/VR for a pharmaceutical manufacturing scenario with AstraZeneca. He is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at RMIT – Australia and obtained his MSc. degree in Computer Science at UFRGS – Brazil, studying Human-Computer interaction. Renan taught different HCI, AI, game development, and Mixed Reality courses.
Renan worked on several HCI-related projects in Augmented and Virtual Reality, including audio interfaces for visually impaired people at RMIT, situated visualization of electromagnetic fields at Halmstad University – Sweden, and an AR-based platform for teaching physics at UFRGS. He mainly uses Unity, Android, and AR/VR devices for his applications. He also holds an IT degree from IFRS – Brazil and a BSc. in Computer Science from UFRGS. He has spent one year abroad via the Science without Borders program at Radford University – USA.