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Media synchronization and, in particular, audiovisual (AV) synchronization, plays a pivotal role in multimedia systems, significantly impacting the Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived by users. What is intriguing is that despite the growing prevalence of multimedia content consumption in 360° environments, the issue of perceived AV synchronization remains relatively unexplored. To tackle this challenge, we present the results of a user study that assessed the influence of AV skews on QoE and the feeling of presence within 360° multimedia content. By examining the various effects of AV skews on the user experience we gain valuable insights into the factors that shape QoE and presence in such immersive settings. These findings have the potential to improve the design and development of more engaging and effective multimedia content, ensuring a seamless and enjoyable experience for users in 360° contexts.

People living with dementia are at risk of social isolation, and conversational AI agents can potentially support such individuals by reducing their loneliness. In our study, a conversational AI agent, called MindTalker, co-designed with therapists and utilizing the GPT-4 Large Language Model (LLM), was developed to support people with early-stage dementia, allowing them to experience a new type of “social relationship” that could be extended to real life. Eight PwD engaged with MindTalker for one month or even longer, and data was collected from interviews. Our findings emphasized that participants valued the novelty of AI, but sought more consistent, deeper interactions. They desired a personal touch from AI, while stressing the irreplaceable value of human interactions. The findings underscore the complexities of AI engagement dynamics, where participants commented on the artificial nature of AI, highlighting important insights into the future design of conversational AI for this population.

Human behaviour and habits co-evolve with technology, and the metaverse is poised to become a key player in reshaping how we live our everyday life. Given the importance of food in our daily lives, we ask: how will our relationships with food be transformed by the metaverse, and what are the promises and pitfalls of this technology? To answer this, we propose a co-design study that reveals the important elements people value in their daily interactions with food. We then present a speculative catalogue of novel metaverse food experiences, and insights from discussing these ideas with food designers, anthropologists and metaverse experts. Our work aims to provide designers with inspirations for building a metaverse that: provides inclusive opportunities for the future of food; helps re-discover the forgotten or lost knowledge about food; facilitates the exploration, excitement and joy of eating; and reinvigorates the ways that food can soothe and heal.

While conversational agents have traditionally been used for simple tasks such as scheduling meetings and customer service support, recent advancements have led researchers to examine their use in complex social situations, such as to provide emotional support and companionship. For mourners who could be vulnerable to the sense of loneliness and disruption of self-identity, such technology offers a unique way to help them cope with grief. In this study, we explore the potential benefits and risks of such a practice, through semi-structured interviews with 10 mourners who actively used chatbots at different phases of their loss. Our findings indicated seven approaches in which chatbots were used to help people cope with grief, by taking the role of listener, acting as a simulation of the deceased, romantic partner, friend and emotion coach. We then highlight how interacting with the chatbots impacted mourners’ grief experience and conclude the paper with further research opportunities.

The acoustic and visual experiences of musicians in the spaces they perform in are complex and organic in nature, entailing a continuous interaction with the environment. With this project, we leverage the power of Virtual Reality (VR) to support musicians in their creative practice by transporting them to novel sonic and visual worlds. For this, we developed a musician-centred VR system, featuring various acoustic and visual virtual environments, VR Rehearse & Perform, based on design requirements gathered with musicians and performance experts. To investigate how VR can be designed to support music-makers in their creative musical practice, we performed iterative tests with 19 musicians followed by semi-structured interviews. Our findings suggest that VR has the potential to support different aspects of the creative musical practice, such as rehearsing, performing and improvising. Our research provides insights and inspirations toward designing musician-centred VR experiences for various musical activities.

With one-person households being increasingly common and Covid-19 lockdown policies forcing people to stay home, remote dining has become common practice for many, who take it as an opportunity to connect with others in times of loneliness. Sharing meals online, also known as digital commensality, is a rich form of interaction, where people leverage technology to achieve a sense of connectedness and belonging while eating. In this paper, we look at digital commensality and we explore its inherent playful potential with the aim to inspire the design of engaging technologies that can support, enhance and augment this form of interaction. For this, we used a situated play design approach to document and analyze the behavior of 36 people (including pairs of friends and strangers) sharing meals online. Our analysis surfaced a set of play potentials of remote dining - i.e., playful things people already do and enjoy spontaneously while sharing meals online. We present those play potentials as inspirational material: they can motivate and enrich the design of future digital commensality technologies by responding to people's desire for playful and social interaction with, through, and around food., Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public., Human Information Communication Design, Design Aesthetics

Location-aware mobile guides are a popular technology for enhancing the experience of heritage walks in historical outdoor sites. Smartphones, as typical mediums for such systems, have been criticised for limiting users’ opportunities for embodied engagement with the environment. In this work, we investigate how display technologies beyond the traditional personal mobile screen can facilitate embodied experiences during outdoor heritage walks. To do this, we revisit the use of portable projected displays as a medium that allows us to explore the effects of overt and blended displays in this context. We conducted a study with 42 participants on an out- door heritage walk, using two display modalities: smartphone and projected display. We discovered that besides the display modality, users’ attitude toward technology, their embodied relationship with the device, and incorporation of spatial aspects in interaction play a key role in generating engagement and shaping the experience of heritage walks.

In this paper, we propose VR Rehearse & Perform - a Virtual Reality application for enhancing the rehearsal efforts of performers by providing them access to accurate recreations - both visual and acoustical - of iconic concert venues.