2021, Auer, Stefan, Gerken, Jens, Reiterer, Harald, Jetter, Hans-Christian

Airlines and flying schools use high-end physical flight simulators (PFS) to reduce costs and risks of pilot training. However, such PFS with full-scale cockpits have very high acquisition and operation costs. In contrast, recent consumer-grade and off-the-shelf soft- and hardware can be used to create increasingly realistic virtual reality flight simulators (VRFS) that could potentially serve as cost-efficient and flexible alternatives. We present a user study with 11 participants to determine whether consumer-grade VRFS can supplement or even replace a PFS during cockpit familiarization training (CFT). We compared a full-scale Boeing 737-800NG PFS with a VRFS based on off-the-shelf flight simulator software combined with a consumer-grade head-mounted display and either finger tracking or a handheld controller as input device. Participants performed instrument reading tasks and check procedures from the aircraft’s operating manual. We did not observe statistically significant differences in successful instrument reading tasks, error rates and task completion between PFS and VRFS during CFT. However, we found that VRFS’ Mental Demand, Physical Demand, Effort, task completion times, and levels of simulator sickness were significantly higher and exceeded acceptable levels. We conclude that future consumer-grade VRFS will need to improve soft- and hard- ware for interacting with simulated switches and reduce simulator sickness before they can serve as PFS alternatives for CFT.

2021, Kjærup, Maria, Skov, Mikael B., Nielsen, Peter A., Kjeldskov, Jesper, Gerken, Jens, Reiterer, Harald

Longitudinal studies in HCI research have the potential to increase our understanding of how human-technology interactions evolve over time. Potentially, longitudinal studies eliminate learning or novelty-effects by considering change through repeated measurements of interaction and use. However, there seems to exist no agreement of how longitudinal HCI study designs are characterized. We conducted an analysis of 106 HCI papers published at the CHI conference from 1982 to 2019 where longitudinal studies were explicitly reported. We analysed these papers using classical longitudinal study metrics, for example duration, metrics, methods, change or stability. We illustrate that longitudinal studies in HCI research are highly diverse in terms of duration lasting from few days to several years and different metrics are applied. It appears that the paper contribution type highly in- fluences study design. While, only a little more than half of the papers discuss or illustrate change/stability during their studies. We further underline considerations of durations vs. saturation, identifying points of measurements and matching con- tribution types with research questions. Finally, we urge researchers to extend im- plications presented on perceiving duration as a singular attribute, as well as longi- tudinal systematic approaches to ‘in-situ’ studies and ethnography in HCI.