A review of QoE research progress in metaverse

Metaverse is a virtual world that maps and interacts with the real world. It is a digital living space with a new social system created through Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Computing (CC) and other technologies. With the rapid development of block chain technology, interactive technology, network and computing technology, communication network technology, digital twin technology, artificial intelligence technology, Internet of Things technology and electronic game technology, the metaverse has also ushered in a stage of rapid development. However, enormous difficulties and challenges remain in how to create a perfect metaverse system that can truly break the barriers between reality and virtual. The quality of content, device and interaction in the metaverse all have an important impact on the Quality of Experience (QoE). The purpose of this paper is to provide the latest research progress of the current metaverse QoE, which will be helpful to the future research of the metaverse QoE and provide the direction for further research.     

Defining user experience goals to guide the design of industrial systems

The key prerequisite for experience-driven design is to define what experience to design for. User experience (UX) goals concretise the intended experience. Based on our own case studies from industrial environments and a literature study, we propose five different approaches to acquiring insight and inspiration for UX goal setting: Brand, Theory, Empathy, Technology, and Vision. Each approach brings in a different viewpoint, thus supporting the multidisciplinary character of UX. The Brand approach ensures that the UX goals are in line with the company's brand promise. The Theory approach utilises the available scientific knowledge of human behaviour. The Empathy approach focuses on knowing the actual users and stepping into their shoes. The Technology approach considers the new technologies that are being introduced and their positive or negative influence on UX. Finally, the Vision approach focuses on renewal, introducing new kinds of UXs. In the design of industrial systems, several stakeholders are involved and they should share common design goals. Using the different UX goal-setting approaches together brings in the viewpoints of different stakeholders, thus committing them to UX goal setting and emphasising UX as a strategic design decision.     

A Context-Aware Interaction Model for the Analysis of Users’ QoE in Mobile Environments

This article describes a novel approach to model the quality of experience (QoE) of users in mobile environments. The context-aware and ratings interaction model (CARIM) addresses the open questions of how to quantify user experiences from the analysis of interaction in mobile scenarios, and how to compare different QoE records to each other. A set of parameters are used to dynamically describe the interaction between the user and the system, the context in which it is performed and the perceived quality of users. CARIM structures these parameters into a uniform representation, supporting the dynamic analysis of interaction to determine QoE of users and enabling the comparison between different interaction records. Its run-time nature allows applications to make context- and QoE-based decisions in real time to adapt themselves, and thus provide a better experience to users. As a result, CARIM provides unified criteria for the inference and analysis of QoE in mobile scenarios. Its design and implementation can be integrated (and easily extended if needed) into many different development environments. An experiment with real users comparing two different interaction designs and validating user behavior hypotheses proved the effectiveness of applying CARIM for the assessment of QoE in mobile applications.     

Connected without disconnection: Overview of light field metaverse applications and their quality of experience

With the rapid technological advances of the recent years, the practical instances of the metaverse have become more immersive and engaging than ever before. In their most frequent forms, the 3D virtual worlds of the metaverse are enabled by virtual reality headsets. This means that the user is completely disconnected from its real environment and is fully immersed in such a virtual world. The quality of experience of virtual reality and other headset-based technologies is now definitely a hot research topic, and the findings of the relevant scientific efforts are continuously emerging. However, as a headset-free immersive 3D technology, light field visualization is greatly underinvestigated with regard to the concept of the metaverse. In this paper, we address the applications of light field metaverse, compare its advantages and disadvantages to more conventional metaverse technologies, and discuss the most important issues regarding user experience. The paper highlights the user-oriented considerations for the development of general-purpose and dedicated light field displays. Additionally, our work examines state-of-the-art display systems and the current feasibility of a light field metaverse.     

Optimization of user experience in mobile application design by using a fuzzy analytic-network-process-based Taguchi method

Mobile application (app) design is an expanding research area, with user experience (UX) as its core. UX encompasses all aspects of human–computer interaction, and thus the optimization of UX has multiple objectives. Quality characteristics related to UX are subjective and even subconscious; moreover, there exists interdependence among UX quality characteristics. However, very little attention has been focused on these issues when optimizing UX based on multiple objectives. In this paper, a fuzzy analytic network process (ANP)-based Taguchi method is proposed for optimizing UX in mobile app design. First, design patterns and UX quality characteristics are determined. Subsequently, a Taguchi experiment is designed and carried out, and then signal-to-noise (S/N) ratios are calculated. A fuzzy ANP is adopted to derive the preference weights for the UX quality characteristics. Based on these weights, the S/N ratios are converted into a multiperformance characteristic index (MPCI) by using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS). Finally, according to the MPCI, the significant design patterns are identified by using the analysis of variance, and the optimal design is obtained by using the response table and response graph. A mobile health app design was presented to illustrate the proposed approach. The results suggest that the proposed approach can effectively manage the interdependence among the subjective and even subconscious UX quality characteristics in the optimization process, and be used as a universal robust design approach to optimize UX in mobile app design.     

Playability: analysing user experience in video games

Currently, few studies focus on analysing the degree of the Player eXperience (PX) in video games. Video games have now become interactive entertainment systems with a high economic impact on society; these are interactive systems characterised by their subjectivity, which differ from other systems in that their main objective is to entertain and amuse the user (player). This work discusses the analysis and evaluation of the User eXperience (UX) in interactive entertainment systems, exploring how usability, given its definition, objectives and the fact it is one of the main dimensions of UX, is not sufficient to characterise the PX, giving rise to a new concept: Playability. In this paper, we present a framework for the analysis and evaluation of the UX in video games. The results show the need and importance of a framework to help us understand and measure the experience that players feel using these types of interactive systems, in order to improve the experience during play time. The proposed framework characterises the experience using attributes to identify and properties to measure UX. It thus provides a multifaceted analysis mechanism to assess the impact of the gaming experience and its relationship with the elements of a video game. We therefore present a system to represent UX based on this framework, with the aim of ensuring and measuring a satisfactory experience of the entertainment system. Finally, we discuss a practical experiment in which an evaluation of the playability of a commercial video game was carried out using the methods proposed in this work.     

Responsibly strategizing with the metaverse: Business implications and DEI opportunities and challenges

This viewpoint article aims to lay out the foundations for IS research on the strategic implications as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) opportunities and challenges of the metaverse – a sociotechnical system providing users with an immersive, synchronous 3D experience of (virtual) reality through interoperable platforms and sensor devices. We first examine the metaverse’s technologies and its underlying business models, which hold immense strategic implications for organizations and industries, and might require rethinking the future of work. As with most emerging technologies able to generate, collect, and process user data, the metaverse comes at a price; leveraging the metaverse strategically will require ethical and DEI considerations. After examining all these aspects of the metaverse, we reflect on ways IS scholarship engaged in strategizing can advance theoretical and practical knowledge by generating novel research questions and outlining a research agenda. Our contribution is twofold: first, we analyze the metaverse using a sociotechnical lens, thereby setting the ground for future studies of the phenomenon. Second, we identify specific strategic implications as well as DEI opportunities and challenges associated with the metaverse, and discuss how scholarship versed in IS strategizing can contribute to addressing them, both theoretically and empirically.     

How to include User eXperience in the design of Human-Robot Interaction

In recent years Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) has become a strategic research field, considering the emergent need for common collaborative execution of manufacturing tasks, shared between humans and robots within the modern factories. However, the majority of the research focuses on the technological aspects and enabling technologies, mainly directing to the robotic side, and usually neglecting the human factors. This work deals with including the needs of the humans interacting with robots in the design in human-robot interaction (HRI). In particular, the paper proposes a user experience (UX)-oriented structured method to investigate the human-robot dialogue to map the interaction with robots during the execution of shared tasks, and to finally elicit the requirements for the design of valuable HRI. The research adopted the proposed method to an industrial case focused on assembly operations supported by collaborative robots and AGVs (Automated Guided Vehicles). A multidisciplinary team was created to map the HRI for the specific case with the final aim to define the requirements for the design of the system interfaces. The novelty of the proposed approach is the inclusion of typically interaction design tools focusing in the analysis of the UX into the design of the system components, without merely focusing on the technological issues. Experimental results highlighted the validity of the proposed method to identify the interaction needs and to drive the interface design.     

Platform for real-time subjective assessment of interactive multimedia applications

With the advent of cloud computing and remote execution of interactive applications, there is a need for evaluating the Quality of Experience (QoE) and the influence on this QoE of network condition variations, media encoding parameter settings and related optimization algorithms. However, current QoE assessment focuses mainly on audiovisual quality in non-interactive applications, such as video-on-demand services. On the other hand, where experiments aim to quantify interactive quality, the focus is typically targeted at games, using an ad-hoc test setup to assess the impact of network variations on the playing experience. In this paper, we present a novel platform enabling the assessment of a broad range of interactive applications (e.g., thin client remote desktop systems, remotely rendered engineering applications, games). Dynamic reconfiguration of media encoding and decoding is built into the system, to allow dynamic adaptation of the media encoding to the network conditions and the application characteristics. Evaluating the influence of these automatic adaptations is a key asset of our approach. A range of possible use cases is discussed, as well as a performance study of our implementation, showing that the platform we built is capable of highly controllable subjective user assessment. Furthermore, we present results obtained by applying the platform for a subjective evaluation of an interactive multimedia application. Specifically, the influence of visual quality and frame rate on interactive QoE has been assessed for a remotely executed race game.     

基于QoE的LTE多业务资源分配算法

高效地利用无线频谱资源和保证用户体验质量是未来无线网络的主要目标。基于此，提出一种基于QoE的LTE多业务资源分配算法。在考虑信道信息、QoS要求及公平性的基础上，引入QoE来计算的用户优先级。特别的，引入最小QoE约束来保证RT用户QoE要求；提出一种次优资源块（Resource Block，RB）分配算法来解决复杂的资源分配优化问题，该算法主要分为两步：保证RT用户最小QoE要求；最大化系统加权和速率。仿真结果表明，相较现有的RT/NRT资源分配算法，该算法在用户分组丢失率、平均QoE和小区频谱效率方面性能都有所提升。     

How to reduce the UX bottleneck – train your software developers

Usability and user experience (UX) methods come from academic environments, where industrial conditions such as time and resources are not of prime importance. Furthermore, usability and UX methods originate from a time when almost all software developments followed a traditional approach, such as the waterfall model. These two facts entail that existing methods often are too resource demanding and complex to apply directly into today’s agile, industrial environments. In this paper we make the claim that methods must be updated and tailored in order to be applicable within the agile, industrial development framework of today. We pursue a solution to simplify well-known methods and to train software developers to perform the UX work. To do this, three methods are modified via an iterative process together with the development of supporting materials. Software developers in three companies are trained in the methods to assess the approach. We find that it indeed is feasible to update and tailor existing usability and UX methods to fit into an agile, industrial environment. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to train developers to perform the usability and UX methods via one-day, in-situ sessions using an ‘instructor’-teaching approach. The training is based on hands-on exercises and real-life tasks. This further boosts the developers’ confidence in performing UX work and promises a better consideration of UX in the development phases. We evaluate our approach through observations of the developers performing the UX tasks on their own at a later point in time.     

Product attributes and user experience design: how to convey product information through user-centered service

The user experience (UX) is a critical issue in both the product design and service sector. Ensuring that customers can easily understand a product or service and thus ensuring higher satisfaction with the customer–product (service) interaction process is essential for survival among competitive industries. However, few studies have attempted to integrate all relevant factors into a comprehensive model of UX. The present study addresses this need by proposing a conceptual UX interaction model that incorporates the characteristics of usability and user interaction level based on quality of experience. A method to apply the model and the steps to implement the data collection and analysis are also proposed. The UX interaction model requires a systematic approach to: (1) decompose the product or service characteristics during a UX interaction process; (2) determine typology of UX items of each characteristic; and (3) select appropriate and feasible strategies to improve these UX items. A quantitative survey for mobile phone users was developed to investigate differences among types of UX and product characteristics. This study provides valuable empirical evidence on the UX interaction model for particular industries where superior quality service experiences are to be achieved.     

Review of digital twin about concepts,technologies, and industrial applications

Various kinds of engineering software and digitalized equipment are widely applied through the lifecycle of industrial products. As a result, massive data of different types are being produced. However, these data are hysteretic and isolated from each other, leading to low efficiency and low utilization of these valuable data. Simulation based on theoretical and static model has been a conventional and powerful tool for the verification, validation, and optimization of a system in its early planning stage, but no attention is paid to the simulation application during system run-time. With the development of new-generation information and digitalization technologies, more data can be collected, and it is time to find a way for the deep application of all these data. As a result, the concept of digital twin has aroused much concern and is developing rapidly. Dispute and discussions around concepts, paradigms, frameworks, applications, and technologies of digital twin are on the rise both in academic and industrial communities. After a complete search of several databases and careful selection according to the proposed criteria, 240 academic publications about digital twin are identified and classified. This paper conducts a comprehensive and in-depth review of these literatures to analyze digital twin from the perspective of concepts, technologies, and industrial applications. Research status, evolution of the concept, key enabling technologies of three aspects, and fifteen kinds of industrial applications in respective lifecycle phase are demonstrated in detail. Based on this, observations and future work recommendations for digital twin research are presented in the form of different lifecycle phases.     

Identification of UX dimensions for incident reporting systems with mobile applications in urban contexts: a longitudinal study

Incident reporting systems enable end-users to report problems that they have experienced in their working activities to authorities. Such applications are sought to sense the quality of the environment, thus enabling authorities to promote safety and well-being among citizens. Many governments are now promoting the use of mobile applications allowing citizens to report incidents in their neighbourhood to the administration. Nonetheless, it is not clear which user experience dimensions affect the adoption of incident reporting systems, and to what extent anticipated use of the system (anticipated UX) is a determinant for predicting the user experience with the final application. In order to understand how citizens perceive incident reporting systems and which factors affect the user experience (UX), we have performed empirical studies including interviews in early phases of the development process and empirical user testing of advanced prototypes. In this paper, we present the results of a longitudinal study on the evolution of the perception of UX dimensions along the development process, from interviews to running prototypes. Hereafter, we describe the method that has been used for coding the findings of these empirical studies according to six UX dimensions (including visual and aesthetic experience, emotions, stimulation, identification, meaning & value and social relatedness/co-experience). Moreover, we describe how the findings have been associated with users’ tasks. The findings from interviews and user testing indicate that whilst the perceived importance of some UX dimensions (such as identification and meaning & value) remains similar over time, other dimensions such as stimulation and emotions do evolve. Beyond the practical implications of this study for the design of incident reporting systems, this work presents an approach that allows comparing the results of UX assessments in different phases of the process.     

An integrated framework of user experience-oriented smart service requirement analysis for smart product service system development

The rapid deployment of digital technologies drives the conventional product service system (PSS) to shift into a new paradigm known as smart PSS. Empowered with smart capabilities, smart PSS has great potential in creating positive user experience (UX). The requirements analysis is an essential task for successful development of smart PSS with strong UX. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of research on the requirement analysis of smart PSS by incorporating smart-enabled UX perspective. Hence, this paper proposes a framework of user experience-oriented smart service requirement (UXO-SSR) analysis for smart PSS development. At first, the relevant factors (e.g., user personas and activity journey) are integrated to conceptualize the UX in smart PSS context. Second, a four-phase model is proposed for identifying UXO-SSR, which can provide an effective tool for acquiring UX requirements of smart PSS from holistic perspective. Third, a novel asymmetric trapezium cloud-based uncertain linguistic BWM approach is developed to evaluate the priority of the identified UXO-SSRs. The approach can appropriately handle the hybrid uncertainties (i.e., hesitancy, fuzziness and randomness) of linguistic evaluation information, thereby improving the accuracy of evaluation results. Finally, a case study of smart sleep service system is presented to demonstrate the feasibility and reliability of the proposed framework.     

User experience: does it matter in complex systems?

This paper explores the concept of user experience (UX) within complex systems in the domain of nuclear power production. The specific context is the development of main control room solutions. As UX has become a prevalent concept in human–computer interaction and related research fields, it is a valid question, whether the concept could bring something new to the research concerning complex safety–critical systems also. In this paper, we introduce the concept of UX as an indicator of the users’ subjective feeling of the appropriateness of the proposed tool for the activity. Based on activity theoretical contemplation, we presume that UX is grounded in the feelings and emotions evoked in the usage of the systems and which concern the status of the whole activity. In the paper, a theory-based characterization of UXs in the particular domain is developed based on three general functions of a tool: instrument, psychological, and communicative. We present the operationalization of UX and three studies in which UXs concerning different control room systems during a control room transformation process were followed. Based on the results of the three studies, we find that the significance of UX as an indicator of quality in use lies in the ability to bring the professional users’ experiences, which are embedded in the inner characteristics of the work and not always observable by external evaluators, to the process of designing new systems. Evidence to support the initial background assumption that UXs may concern instrumental aspects of tools was identified in the studies.     

Applying intelligent agents and semantic web services in eGovernment environments

The increasing volume of eGovernment‐related services is demanding new approaches for service integration and interoperability in this domain. Semantic web (SW) technologies and applications can leverage the potential of eGovernment service integration and discovery, thus tackling the problems of semantic heterogeneity characterizing eGovernment information sources and the different levels of interoperability. eGovernment services will therefore be semantically described in the foreseeable future. In an environment with semantically annotated services, software agents are essential as the entities responsible for exploiting the semantic content in order to automate some tasks, and so enhance the user's experience. In this paper, we present a framework that provides a seamless integration of semantic web services and intelligent agents technologies by making use of ontologies to facilitate their interoperation. The proposed framework can assist in the development of powerful and flexible distributed systems in complex, dynamic, heterogeneous, unpredictable and open environments. Our approach is backed up by a proof‐of‐concept implementation, where the breakthrough of integrating disparate eGovernment services has been tested.     

LTE-A系统中基于QoE能效的无线资源分配算法

针对无线通信网络能耗日益增加与用户体验质量(quality of experience,QoE)难以得到保证的问题,提出一种LTE-A系统基于QoE能效的资源分配算法。首先,给出联合优化QoE和能效的数学模型,特别的考虑了用户最小QoE要求;其次,根据约束条件提出了一种迭代算法进行用户资源块(resource block,RB)分配,然后利用分数规划的性质并采用凸优化方法求得最优的发射功率来优化目标函数。仿真结果表明,相较现有基于能效的资源分配算法,该算法在提高系统性能的同时有效的保证了用户QoE。     

A psychometric user experience model based on fuzzy measure approaches

User experience (UX) is considered a key quality of interactive products in today’s competitive mass markets and is of growing interest in both academia and industry. UX concerns the encounters a user has while interacting with products, systems, and services. It is ubiquitous, omnipresent, and dynamic in nature, referring to the non-quantifiable, subjective, affective-based, and context-dependent processes. UX is difficult for researchers to objectively and uniformly measure as it involves complex human perceptual interpretations of experiential responses with a certain degree of uncertainty, imprecision, and vagueness. Based on the user experience questionnaire (UEQ), this paper presents a psychometric UX model using fuzzy measure approaches, the purpose of which is to develop a metric for quantitative assessment of certain product UXs through a user experience index (UXI). This model enables researchers to understand users’ perceptions of the interactions that constitute qualities of using a specific product. An empirical study concerning the episodic UX measures of using a set of touch mice was conducted to verify the applicability and effectiveness of the proposed UX model. The theoretical and practical implications of the UX model are also discussed.     

ExtJS在RIA开发中的应用

RIA是一种具有高度互动性和丰富UI功能的Web应用程序。RIA应用可以提供强大的功能,让用户体验到高交互性,丰富了用户体验。文章在参考了国内外文献和工程实践的基础上,并针对J2EEWeb应用中引入RIA技术所带来的各种影响和问题,提出了相应的解决方案。通过结合ExtJS和Flex等RIA开发技术,并整合现今流行的Web框架,将相关技术融合起来应用,用于电能质量监测统一平台的开发与设计。