ECREA16-Abstract

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Thursday, November 10

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VirtualWorlds andHuman-Computer Interaction

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Mutual Respect or Unrequited Love? Exploring the Relationship Between Digital Media Studies and Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Research...

M. Barry

, G. Doherty

Trinity College Dublin, School of Computer Science & Statistics, Dublin, Ireland

Digital media and HCI research share similar interests – the production and use of digital technologies for communication in myriad contexts of everyday

life. However, each approaches it from a very different direction and disciplinary focus. Media studies examine the digital as the paradigm for production,

distribution, consumption and digestion of communications as well as exploring its impact on individuals, communities and society, analytically, creatively

and critically from social science and cultural studies perspectives. HCI research examines the design and use of technologies towards improving the experi‑

ence of interfacing with computers, particularly in novel contexts, with its own disciplinary heritage from computer science and influences from psychology,

anthropology and sociology. This paper maps the intersection between digital media studies and human-computer interaction (HCI) research today, to

examine how both fields now regard each other in the 21

century. Is each field as relevant to the other as it was 20 years ago or is there a (dis)continuity

in their mutual regard? Media studies have a long pre-digital history in the mass media of newspapers, cinema, radio and television, where concepts from

HCI were all but irrelevant. HCI has an equally deep pre-media history in valve-switches, mainframe computing and ergonomics, largely unrelated to media

studies. Both histories collided with the development of networked digital computing, particularly the arrival of the internet in the early 1990s. Digital

computing provided newways to mediate, newmaterials to be mediated, new uses and new relationships to be made (Pavlik, 1998, McQuail 2000).The in‑

teractivity of these ‘new media’ – indeed as their defining characteristic (Lister et al, 2003) – thus opened up the field of HCI for media research to mine

for a rich set of resources around concepts such as affordance, agency, accessibility, embodiment and interactivity itself, as well as theory on the potential

of new media from related fields of artificial intelligence and pervasive and ubiquitous computing. Meanwhile, with the evolutionary shift in computing

from machines to social objects (Turkle, 1984, Suchman 1987) HCI research embarked on a reciprocal effort, utilising now relevant media and communica‑

tion theory on active audiences, uses and gratifications, social networking and so on. This paper examines recent research output from both HCI and media

studies for evidence of mutual regard, through citation, reference to theory and acknowledgment of common ground. Using a descriptive content and

discourse analysis of a constructed sample, the study explores if and how both HCI and media studies still reflect on, use and share each other’s contribu‑

tions to knowledge. The findings suggest an equal but distant regard for each other with some significant overlap and mutual recognition particularly on

research into social media. However, differences in terminology, citation style, and epistemological values attached to types of research present challenges

for interdisciplinary work in some common areas.The discussion explores how the use of media and communications theory in HCI may offer ways to rethink

its application in its own discipline and suggests where future interdisciplinary work may be of benefit to both fields.

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Virtual Reality and Multi-Sensorial Marketing: When Our Cognitive Knowledge Leads the Digital Experiences

E. Zilles Borba

, M. Zuffo

University of Sao Paulo USP, Interdisciplinary Center in Interactive Technologies CITI-USP, Sao Paulo, Brazil

In a post-digital society to create multi-sensorial experiences with digital interfaces is a prominent desire of academic researchers and technological com‑

panies. So, more than providing an audiovisual experience, the actual generation of virtual environments is characterized by creating additional stimuli

in the user perception process when exploring virtual reality (VR). This can be seen particularly with the recent revolution of head-mounted display de‑

vices (HMD) and, of course, with the more natural to the human interactions with digital interfaces generated by sensors, cameras and body tracking

systems. In our perspective, when creating multi-sensorial interfaces it is also created a more immersive and intuitive experience to the user. In other

words, the perceptual and cognitive knowledge developed by the user in the physical world leads her/his exploration through the VR. It also creates a more

natural understanding of the synthetic world and, of course, a similar behavior to what is considered natural in the physical world. Numerous optimistic

ideas can be associated with this phenomenon, such as: the inclusion of elderly people in the digital lifestyle, after all they will no longer need to learn

the machine modus operandi but simply to interact with the computer as if it were a person; the prevention of accidents or disasters through the virtual

training, after all the user will be able to practice any risk situation in a realistic 3D scenery where she/he fells the space, objects and activities in a similar

way of the original ones (military, industrial, architectural, engineer, medical, sports, etc.); or even, and this is a point that multi-sensorial interfaces in VR

awakes our attention, a huge opportunity to brands and corporate companies optimize their communication and marketing relationship with potential

consumers, after all VR is a post-digital media platform that allows users to experience a more immersive, engaging, funny and participatory interaction

than traditional web environments. This paper launches a reflexive discussion about the techno-cultural issues linked to the multi-sensorial interfaces in

VR. Specifically, this work intend to contribute with the communication and marketing areas launching a deep overview on already done practices with

this kind of media. So, more than presenting case studies, the methodological approach carries a qualitative analysis that crosses all the data collected by

the authors through exploratory observations with the fundamental theory about digital communication (Baudrillard, 1994; Kerckhove, 1995; Levy, 1999;

Castells, 1999, Jenkins, 2003, Aaker, 2009), perception studies (Davidoff, 2001; Accioly, 2010; Zilles Borba, 2014) and VR technology (Zuffo, 2006; Blake,

2010; Slater, 2014). The analyses corpus was composed by eight marketing campaigns in VR with HMD (Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, Samsung Gear VR)

and tracking systems (Leap Motion, OptiTrack). All the technological equipment was available in the laboratories of the Interdisciplinary Center in Inter‑

active Technologies from the University of Sao Paulo (CITI-USP). Keywords: Virtual Reality, Multi-sensorial Interfaces, Immersion, Perception, Cognition,

Post-Digital, Digital Marketing