[iva] PhD in Asynchronous Collaborative Virtual / Augmented Reality

[Mills, Gregory J]

We are pleased to announce that we are seeking candidates for a PhD position in asynchronous virtual/augmented 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/

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>



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