[Commlist] PhD in Collaborative asynchronous virtual reality

We are pleased to announce that we are seeking candidates for a PhD 
position in asynchronous virtual reality at the Department of Computer 
Science at Kingston University, London (See below for description of 
project).

The deadline for application is 8th March 2023

Starting date: October 2023

Application instructions: 
https://www.kingston.ac.uk/faculties/science-engineering-and-computing/research/research-degrees/grs-studentships/ 
<https://www.kingston.ac.uk/faculties/science-engineering-and-computing/research/research-degrees/grs-studentships/> 


Contact: (g.mills /at/ kingston.ac.uk) <mailto:(g.mills /at/ kingston.ac.uk)>

*Description of project: *

Collaborating with others is an essential part of work and play, and 
digital platforms that facilitate remote collaboration are becoming ever 
more important. This is due to an increased reliance of companies on 
teams distributed around the globe, a growing awareness of 
sustainability concerns about travel, as well as adoption of 
remote-working practices in the aftermath of Covid-19.

Such globally-distributed teamwork typically involves tasks and 
personnel distributed over different time zones, which requires that 
systems support asynchronous work-practices. Importantly, asynchronous 
collaboration has several advantages over synchronous collaboration, as 
it increases the ability of teams to work in parallel and to coordinate 
flexibly on time-management, while also giving teams more time to review 
and reflect on the tasks at hand. Currently, instant messaging platforms 
such as Slack and WhatsApp natively support asynchronous interactions, 
while groupware such as Microsoft Office, Google Workspace and GitHub 
provide rich sets of tools for large groups of distributed teams to 
coordinate.

However, despite the importance and ubiquity of asynchronous 
collaboration, there are currently no commercially available virtual or 
augmented reality platforms (XR) supporting asynchronous collaboration. 
The main reason is that, although the interaction design criteria for 
standard groupware are well established, building such platforms in XR 
requires addressing multiple interrelated Human-Computer Interaction 
challenges in 3D space whose constraints and affordances are still 
poorly understood in contrast to those of instant messaging.

There is now an urgent need to investigate how to provide such 
functionality in XR. Arguably, the biggest conceptual and technological 
hurdle is that, unlike standard platforms which are designed to support 
the exchange of simple messages (e.g., text, audio, video), in 
asynchronous XR, the transmitted "messages" consist of detailed 
recordings of avatars interacting with each other and the artefacts in 
the virtual environment. A system supporting such interactions must 
provide users with the ability to edit, integrate, and reconcile 
multiple past histories of interactions, within the current interaction.

The overall aim of this project is to design, build and evaluate an 
asynchronous XR platform fulfilling these goals. The PhD will address 
one or more of the following challenges:

1. How should the platform provide users with a representation of the 
current interaction record, as well as past interaction(s) to, e.g., to 
support users in identifying, signalling, and recovering from 
miscommunication?

2. How should the platform allow users to interact with the 
representation of past interactions, e.g. pausing, replaying, comparing, 
and resuming? Groupware such as GitHub and Word provide fine-grained 
tools for users to meticulously integrate their modifications. 
Analogously, how should an XR interface be designed to support users to 
collaboratively edit and resolve spatio-temporal conflicts between 
multiple realities?

3. How should the platform provide users with the ability to collaborate 
within and transition between multiple different realities?

Candidates should have strong programming skills (e.g. C++, Unity, or 
Unreal) and an interest in psychology and human-computer interaction.

Supervisor: Dr Gregory Mills (g.mills /at/ kingston.ac.uk) 
<mailto:(g.mills /at/ kingston.ac.uk)>

---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ commlist.org)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------