Tangible VR for Spatial Penetrative Thinking
The spatial ability of penetrative thinking (a.k.a VPA: Visual Penetration Ability), is about imagining the interior structure or cross-sections of objects based on external 3D information. Compared to other spatial abilities that have been studied for 50+ year, the discovery of penetrative thinking is fairly recent (1996). Yet, the ability to imagine cross-sections is important in geology, biology, human anatomy, and dentistry, among other areas.
Given penetrative thinking's importance and its under-explored status, we have designed a tangible VR system with the goal to engage this spatial ability. The interface consists of a physical plank (a physical cutting plane) with certain sensors, VR headset, and foot pedal. The VR environment is a series of puzzles, designed to be solved with penetrative thinking ability. Inspired by this ability's literature and based our iterative design process, the puzzles have increasing difficulty with various spatial factors.
Other Info:
Given penetrative thinking's importance and its under-explored status, we have designed a tangible VR system with the goal to engage this spatial ability. The interface consists of a physical plank (a physical cutting plane) with certain sensors, VR headset, and foot pedal. The VR environment is a series of puzzles, designed to be solved with penetrative thinking ability. Inspired by this ability's literature and based our iterative design process, the puzzles have increasing difficulty with various spatial factors.
Other Info:
- Funding Agency: SSHRC
Conference Proceedings
- Jack Shen-Kuen Chang, Alison Doucette, Georgina Yeboah, Timothy Welsh, Michael Nitsche, and Ali Mazalek. "Keep the Ball Rolling: Designing Game-Based Tangible VR for Spatial Penetrative Thinking Ability." In Proceedings of the 2019 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS '19), pp. 215-226. ACM, 2019. [pdf] / [pub]
- Jack Shen-Kuen Chang, Alison F. Doucette, Georgina Yeboah, Timothy Welsh, Michael Nitsche, and Ali Mazalek. "A Tangible VR Game Designed for Spatial Penetrative Thinking Ability." In Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '18), p. D307. ACM, 2018. [pdf] / [pub]
Journal Papers
- Pathak, Aarohi, Jack SK Chang, Gabby Resch, Alison Doucette, Georgina Yeboah, Timothy Nevin Welsh, Michael Nitsche, and Ali Mazalek. "Thinking Through the Box: Evaluating a 3D Game to Engage Penetrative Thinking." Frontiers in Virtual Reality 1 (2020): 33. [pub]
(in alphabetical order)
- Alison Doucette
- Prof. Ali Mazalek
- Prof. Michael Nitsche
- Aarohi Pathak
- Gabriel Resch
- Prof. Timothy Welsh
- Georgina Yeboah
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