Overview

The iSpace­Lab at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) con­ducts inno­v­a­tive research at the inter­sec­tion of Virtual Reality/XR, Psychology/Cognitive Science, Informatics, Human Factors/HCI, and Art/Design. Our inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team inves­ti­gates the under­ly­ing per­cep­tual, cog­ni­tive, and social processes that govern human inter­ac­tion, moving far beyond the tra­di­tional desk­top metaphor.

Our vision is to under­stand and design pro­foundly new ways for people to inter­act with and ben­e­fit from tech­nol­ogy. We ques­tion how human per­cep­tion and behav­iour trans­late to vir­tual envi­ron­ments and explore how we can “intel­li­gently cheat” per­cep­tion to create com­pelling and effec­tive expe­ri­ences. This involves tack­ling fun­da­men­tal chal­lenges like cyber­sick­ness and devel­op­ing more effec­tive, embod­ied loco­mo­tion inter­faces (includ­ing hands-free, leaning-based, and BCI) that sup­port effort­less spa­tial orientation.

Ultimately, our goal is to lever­age these insights to design trans­for­ma­tive tech­nolo­gies that have a pos­i­tive impact. This could include fos­ter­ing not just an improve user expe­riene and usablil­ity, but also enhanced well-being, empa­thy, awe, and social connection.

iSpace Research Agenda & Vision in a Nutshell

Virtual real­ity soft­ware and hard­ware is becom­ing increas­ingly afford­able and pow­er­ful, and is increas­ingly being used in exper­i­men­tal research. In fact, the pos­si­bil­ity to con­duct tightly con­trolled and repeat­able exper­i­ments with nat­u­ral­is­tic multi-modal stim­uli in a closed action-perception loop sug­gest that VR could become an increas­ingly pow­er­ful yet flex­i­ble research tool.

Despite increas­ing com­pu­ta­tional power and ren­der­ing qual­ity, though, it is debat­able whether humans nec­es­sar­ily per­ceive, feel, think, and behave sim­i­larly in real and vir­tual envi­ron­ments – which is essen­tial for achiev­ing suf­fi­cient real-world trans­fer of exper­i­men­tal results gained in the lab, and pro­vid­ing com­pelling expe­ri­ences. What might be miss­ing? What can we learn from this? How can we use this basic infor­ma­tion to improve both tech­nol­ogy and user experience?

How might we be able to “cheat intel­li­gently” in VR and, e.g., pro­vide users with a com­pelling sen­sa­tion of being in (“pres­ence”) and moving through (“vec­tion”) the sim­u­lated envi­ron­ments with­out the need for full phys­i­cal loco­mo­tion or large costly motion sim­u­la­tors? Why is it so hard to con­trol all 4 degrees of free­dom when flying a quad­copter drone or through VR with the stan­dard gamepad or RC con­troller? And how  could we use our knowl­edge about human embod­ied per­cep­tion to design more effec­tive yet afford­able loco­mo­tion inter­faces for both 2D (ground-based) and 3D (flying), for both telep­res­ence and immer­sive VR? Can the mere illu­sion of self-motion (“vec­tion”) be suf­fi­cient for pro­vid­ing sim­i­lar ben­e­fits as actual loco­mo­tion? i.e., what is the func­tional sig­nif­i­cance of vec­tion? How far can we get with just visual cues? What ben­e­fits do we gain from multi-modal stimuli?

And last but not least, how could we lever­age the rapidly increas­ing power of emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as VR/XR and AI to make a pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tion to our soci­ety and planet?

[Note that there are many other areas that we work in and are inter­ested in expand­ing into. See also addi­tional research topics and inter­ests and our iSpace Youtube Playlist]

See also our iSpace Youtube Playlist

Below is an older short intro video of iSpace lab and a few graph­ics to explain our research agenda and vision (note the video is from 2011, so since then we added a lot of addi­tional research topics and inter­ests). enjoy.