Papers by Giulia Wally Scurati
The current and future challenges of sustainable development require a massive transformation
of ... more The current and future challenges of sustainable development require a massive transformation
of habits and behaviors in the whole society at many levels. This demands a change of
perspectives, priorities, and practices that can only result from the development of more aware,
informed, and instructed communities and individuals. The field of design for sustainable behavior
is answering this need through the development of products, systems, and services to support
the change of people’s habits and decision-making processes. In this regard, Virtual Reality (VR)
is a promising tool: it has already been explored to drive sustainable behavior change in several
situations, through a wide range of devices, technologies, and modalities. This variety provides
uncountable opportunities to designers, but it comes with a series of ethical, psychological, and
technical questions. Hence, VR developers should be able to distinguish and identify possible
strategies, delivering suitable solutions for each case study. In this work, we present a framework for
the development of VR experiences to support sustainable behavior change, based on a systematic
review. We consider the various features to manage and possible alternatives when creating a VR
experience, linking them to the behavioral aspects that can be addressed according to the project’s
aim. The framework will provide designers with a tool to explore and orient themselves towards
possible sets of optimal choices generating tailored solutions.
This paper describes the design and preliminary test of a virtual reality driving simulator capab... more This paper describes the design and preliminary test of a virtual reality driving simulator capable of conveying haptic and visual messages to promote eco-sustainable driving behavior. The driving simulator was implemented through the Unity game engine; a large street environment, including high-speed and urban sections, was created to examine different driving behaviors. The hardware setup included a gaming driving seat, equipped with a steering wheel and pedals; the virtual scenarios were displayed through an Oculus Rift headset to guarantee an immersive experience. Haptic stimulation (i.e., vibrations) was delivered to the driver through the accelerator pedal, while visual stimuli (i.e., icons and colors) were shown on a virtual head-up display. The sensory feedbacks were presented both alone and in combination, providing information about excessive acceleration and speed. Four different virtual scenarios, each one including a distracting element (i.e., navigator, rain, call, and traffic), were also created. Ten participants tested the simulator. Fuel consumption was evaluated by calculating a mean power index (MPI) in reference to the sensory feedback presentation; physiological reactions and responses to a usability survey were also collected. The results revealed that the haptic and visuo-haptic feedback were responsible for an MPI reduction, respectively, for 14% and 11% compared with a condition of no feedback presentation; while visual feedback alone resulted in an MPI increase of 11%. The efficacy of haptic feedback was also accompanied by a more relaxing physiological state of the users, compared with the visual stimulation. The system's usability was adequate, although haptic stimuli were rated slightly more intrusive than the visual ones. Overall, these preliminary results highlight how promising the use of the haptic channel can be in communicating and guiding the driver toward a more eco-sustainable behavior.
Energy consumption of the EU has a crucial environmental impact; several efforts are nowadays thu... more Energy consumption of the EU has a crucial environmental impact; several efforts are nowadays thus directed into massively reducing energy consumption by envelope improvement, system efficiency and smart control. On the other hand, the indoor thermal and lighting conditions significantly influence users' wellbeing and productivity, which is especially important when dealing with educational and working facilities. Strategies to enhance system efficiency are focused on design and construction aspects. These strategies ease to promote a powerful approach which is needed when focusing on existing buildings in need of retrofit measures. When dealing with new or refurbished buildings, energy saving has a further step to achieve. In the last years, research trends moved towards an increasing inclusion of human factors in energy evaluation. This allows to account for the occupancy variability in the energy analyses, considering how to bridge the performance gap between predictive models and actual consumptions due to indoor thermal settings. In empty buildings energy consumption is huge and economic efforts are wasted, due to unconscious energy-wasting behaviors. Previous studies with Interactive Virtual Environments confirmed that indoor environments illuminated by different color lights lead to the perception of different levels of thermal comfort. The results of the present paper replicate previous evidence collected in real conditions, suggesting that Virtual Reality is a valid and reliable tool to assess thermal comfort more quickly and cheaply. This paper provides a further perspective on this topic, including also the use of different fragrances to understand how the indoor environment could be enhanced and manipulated to increase wellbeing, thermal perception and finally energy saving.
Augmented Reality (AR) is considered as one of the most promising technologies for Industry 4.0. ... more Augmented Reality (AR) is considered as one of the most promising technologies for Industry 4.0. AR allows to display the needed information at the right time and to locate it in the desired space, superimposing it to the real world. In this way, it could simplify the work of industrial operators in a variety of tasks, from planning and commissioning to assembly and maintenance. Despite the growing research interest and efforts for the development of AR applications and technologies for the industrial domain, AR is still rarely used in real industrial procedures, often remaining at a conceptual level. In fact, developers fail to completely answer the actual needs of industries and workers because of a lack of knowledge of the context and the absence of guidelines to drive the design and development of AR applications. One of the open issues is the choice of the proper visualization methods to display technical information in AR, which is not trivial. Both the paper-based documentation, based on text and illustrations, and digital documentation, including CAD models and image or video-based tutori-als, present different criticalities when adapted to the AR technology. Other visual material has been developed specifically to be used in AR, but it is difficult to use because of a lack of standards which are instead present for the former paper-based and digital documentation. In this work, we categorize and compare different AR visual assets, illustrating their advantages and disadvantages and providing directions for future research.
The use of collaborative robots in the manufacturing industry has widely spread in the last decad... more The use of collaborative robots in the manufacturing industry has widely spread in the last decade. In order to be efficient, the human-robot collaboration needs to be properly designed by also taking into account the operator's psychophysiological reactions. Virtual Reality can be used as a tool to simulate human-robot collaboration in a safe and cheap way. Here, we present a virtual collaborative platform in which the human operator and a simulated robot coordinate their actions to accomplish a simple assembly task. In this study, the robot moved slowly or more quickly in order to assess the effect of its velocity on the human's responses. Ten participants tested this application by using an Oculus Rift head-mounted display; ARTracking cameras and a Kinect system were used to track the operator's right arm movements and hand gestures respectively. Performance, user experience, and physiological responses were recorded. The results showed that while humans' performances and evaluations varied as a function of the robot's velocity, no differences were found in the physiological responses. Taken together, these data highlight the relevance of the kinematic aspects of robot's motion within a human-robot collaboration and provide valuable insights to further develop our virtual human-machine interactive platform.
As the popularity of winter outdoor sports is increasing, a growing number of users are engaging ... more As the popularity of winter outdoor sports is increasing, a growing number of users are engaging in activities in uncontrolled terrain, thus training for avalanche rescue is more important than ever. Traditional training takes place through workshops and in field sessions, presenting limitations to the training availability, since they require time, organization and specific weather conditions. This is problematic since the use of transceivers to locate buried individuals is not trivial and requires practice. Virtual Reality (VR) training has shown to be effective in several fields, especially in the context of hazardous conditions and emergencies, which require decision making under time pressure and management of complex tools in uncontrolled or unsafe environments. Examples include disaster medicine, military operations, and other fields in which actions must be performed precisely in short time frame. In this work, we present the development of an immersive VR system for avalanche rescue training as a complementary tool to the traditional techniques in order to prepare the trainee for field training sessions. We discuss the definition of the system requirements, the design and implementation of the tool, and considerations regarding hardware and software. Finally, we discuss possible limitations and future development.
The increasing concern for sustainability related issues lead to the rise of new fields in design... more The increasing concern for sustainability related issues lead to the rise of new fields in design research, dedicated to limit the negative impact of the human activities on the environment and society. After addressing issues related to production , efficiency, recyclability and disassembly, designers start to recognize their responsibility in guiding users to behave in a more responsible and sustainable way. For this reason, designing products to support users' behaviour change is becoming one of the most popular trends in design research at the moment. To achieve the desired results design for behaviour change, and in particular, Design for Sustainable Behavior, exploits a variety of approaches. In this Chapter, we explore the use of Design for Sustainable Behavior techniques through a literature reviews of theories and case studies. Then, we defined a framework which describes the use of multisensory stimuli as elements to support different phases of interaction during the user experience with an interactive product. We relate this framework to previous works and then we discuss two case studies.
Aviation strives today to include environmental and social considerations as drivers for decision... more Aviation strives today to include environmental and social considerations as drivers for decision making in design. This paper proposes a serious game to raise awareness of the value and cost implications of being 'sustainability compliant' when developing aerospace subsystems and components. After describing the development of the game, from needfinding to prototyping and testing, the paper discusses the results from verification activities with practitioners, revealing the ability of the game to raise sustainability awareness and support negotiation across disciplinary boundaries in design.
The transition towards more sustainable practices is one of the main challenges that companies an... more The transition towards more sustainable practices is one of the main challenges that companies and organizations are currently facing. The use of serious games and gamification has shown to be effective in creating awareness and support learning in many contexts, including sustainability education of practitioners and future ones. We performed a systematic mapping of the use of games on sustainability for companies and organizations. The results show current trends and voids in research concerning a series of categories and provide insights on possible future directions in this area.
The design of large dams is a collaborative activity with relevant social and political implicati... more The design of large dams is a collaborative activity with relevant social and political implications. Planning such large infrastructures requires involving all the interested stakeholders, making shared decisions, tracing the design process. There are currently not many Virtual Prototyping tools to support this collaborative design process. In this paper, we propose a participated planning support system based on mobile and Augmented Reality technologies which allows different stakeholders to take part in the review of a large dam project through an application that automatically acquires information available online, allows all stakeholders to share information, and finally records everything for a subsequent analysis. The development of the application, as well as its use in two case studies and a user study, are described in the paper.
Starting from the pro-environmental potential of virtual reality (VR), the aim was to understand ... more Starting from the pro-environmental potential of virtual reality (VR), the aim was to understand how different statistical information formats can enhance VR persuasive potential for plastic consumption, recycling and waste. Naturalistic, immersive virtual reality environments (VREs) were designed ad hoc to display three kinds of statistical evidence formats, featured as three different formats (i.e., numerical, concrete and mixed). Participants were exposed only to one of the three formats in VR, and their affect, emotions, sense of presence, general attitudes toward the environment, specific attitudes and behavioral intentions toward plastic, use, waste, recycle, as well as their social desirability proneness were measured. Numerical format was the least effective across all dimensions. Concrete and mixed formats were similar. Social desirability only partially affected participants' attitudes and behavioral intentions. Numerical format did not increase the persuasive efficacy of statistical evidence displayed in VR, with respect to visual alone. Implications and future directions for designing effective VRE promoting pro-environmental behaviors were discussed.
Humans tendency to engage in behaviors that are harmful to themselves, the environment, and the s... more Humans tendency to engage in behaviors that are harmful to themselves, the environment, and the society has always been present on a personal and collective level. However, the concern for this kind of phenomena is increasing, as demographic and economic growth is amplifying its impact on people health, economies, and ecosystems. As a consequence, we have seen the rise of research fields as design for behavior change, with a growing interest in the use of tools as persuasive technologies, serious games and interactive systems to affect people awareness, attitude, and behavior. To these purposes, computer graphics and especially virtual reality (VR) has great potential since it
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Papers by Giulia Wally Scurati
of habits and behaviors in the whole society at many levels. This demands a change of
perspectives, priorities, and practices that can only result from the development of more aware,
informed, and instructed communities and individuals. The field of design for sustainable behavior
is answering this need through the development of products, systems, and services to support
the change of people’s habits and decision-making processes. In this regard, Virtual Reality (VR)
is a promising tool: it has already been explored to drive sustainable behavior change in several
situations, through a wide range of devices, technologies, and modalities. This variety provides
uncountable opportunities to designers, but it comes with a series of ethical, psychological, and
technical questions. Hence, VR developers should be able to distinguish and identify possible
strategies, delivering suitable solutions for each case study. In this work, we present a framework for
the development of VR experiences to support sustainable behavior change, based on a systematic
review. We consider the various features to manage and possible alternatives when creating a VR
experience, linking them to the behavioral aspects that can be addressed according to the project’s
aim. The framework will provide designers with a tool to explore and orient themselves towards
possible sets of optimal choices generating tailored solutions.