Caught Between Real and Virtual Worlds

While agreement was breaking out at this workshop, so too were some concerns. As most HCI practitioners would agree the distinction between design and evaluation in HCI is often blurred, indeed design and evaluation have been described as the different sides of the same coin. The design of the DISCOVER system proved to be no different. As we elicited requirements and undertook early design we kept an eye on evaluation, ultimately as a sanity check. The use of the prototype, described above, had given us clear usability requirements. The affinity diagram had given us detailed requirements of the design, content and substance of the DISCOVER collaborative virtual environment but concerns as to the issue of evaluation (and with it validation) began to emerge.

Design Tensions: No Magic, Thanks

For many collaborative tasks in virtual environments, the goal is to achieve a particular state of affairs within the virtual world, for example agreeing the layout of an office, as in Hindmarsh et al. (1998). For others, the activity within the CVE is part of a larger collaborative process, but the way collaboration works within the CVE need not exactly replicate real world interaction. In contrast, the DISCOVER environment must support the acquisition of real world skills. In short, skills acquired in the DISCOVER CVE must be transferable to the real world of the ship. This presents a significant constraint: ideally, interaction and collaboration must not be artificially harder or take longer than in the real world, but neither must they be artificially easier or executed faster. Thus the design of DISCOVER should treat with caution "magical" devices such as birds' eye views of the state of environment, Star Trek-like transporting, or visible rubber banding between an avatar and its current focus of attention.

Accordingly, much research which has addressed the problems of ensuring that the users of such environments are aware of their surroundings and of other users cannot be employed directly. Consider, for example, the problems with recognizing other avatars. To maintain realism, avatars cannot be simply labelled. There may also be the presence of dense smoke, and perhaps the need for the avatars to wear vision obscuring breathing apparatus. All of this means that recognizing one's colleagues (as avatars), mediated in the real situation by such characteristics as gait, stance and minor variations in standard issue clothing, becomes far more difficult.

Thus there is a fundamental tension between exploiting the technology to the full to produce a state-of-the-art virtual training environment and creating one which is faithful to the behaviour and constraints of a real ship. This, of course, is not merely a design issue but also presents a corresponding evaluation challenge.

Develop a Highly Usable VR System - and Do It Yesterday!" Continue...

Phase 2: Hello, I'm Your Avatar

A prototype system was created and demonstrated to trainers and prospective trainees at all three maritime training sites. In use each trainee begins by adopting a role - captain, chief engineer, first mate and so forth. They then put on a lightweight set of combined headphones and microphone to afford communication with other avatars and the trainer. Once a minimum of two trainees have entered the system, the trainer, who has been overseeing this process, starts the training scenario (Fig. 6.1). Avatars are able to communicate with one another by way of (virtual) radio and (virtual) telephone and are able to walk and run, open doors and pick up and operate fire extinguishers.

The trainer (or trainers) have all these facilities but have the God-like powers of being able to watch all trainees simultaneously, set fires and so forth as can be seen in Fig. 3.2. The training itself consists of working through a detailed scenario, usually drawn from a real world incident, which requires the trainees to role play and collectively deal with the problems which arise during the course of playing it out. At the end of the training, the trainer will debrief those involved and may use the play-back facilities of the DISCOVER CVE to illustrate particular points.

Demonstrations of the software and simple hands-on tasks were followed by interviews and questionnaires. Our intention was to give potential end users a clearer impression of what a CVE is, how it could be used, to elicit feedback which could be used to refine requirements. We had also evidently managed to convince our developers of the importance of usability issues, since they were particularly keen to have any problems of this sort identified. However, our intentions were confounded by the very prominence which usability assumed in these initial trials. Eager for early feedback, and understandably reluctant to undertake development which might be misdirected, our technologists delivered a prototype just as soon as the software could be run independently of its development environment. This meant that although a reasonable impression could be gained of the functionality which could be offered, user interaction was in a very immature state. As a consequence, finer grain usability issues, for example the ability to identify the focus of an avatar's gaze, were obscured by larger difficulties such as moving through the environment. Equally users could not be induced to speculate in depth about how the system might be used, or how training delivered through such a medium might relate to existing practice. For example, it is difficult to convince the captain of one of the world's largest passenger vessels of the possibilities of the new medium after difficulty with movement control has "trapped" him for some minutes in a corner of the virtual bridge. However, some indications did emerge of the type of usage envisaged in each training context, and much debate was triggered about the detailed design features which would be necessary to support these.

The developers now urgently required a unified, detailed, concrete design specification which would nonetheless support each intended context of use. This was to be achieved by means of a workshop involving each of the three maritime organizations. (There was only one offshore organization in the project, whose requirements were relatively unified and straightforward.)

Phase 3: Virtual Reality Meets Paper and Pen

At this two-day event, trainers from the three organizations met with the representatives from one of the software developer organizations and two facilitators from the requirements team.

The agenda was very simple: to agree the detailed functionality of the maritime simulator and how it was expected to be used. We adapted elements of Contextual Design (Holtzblatt and Beyer, 1998) to facilitate these processes, principally a variant of the affinity diagram technique, which supports the identification of common themes from a mass of contextual data. We began by asking each training organization to revisit what they wanted of DISCOVER in terms of the "w" words (familiar to user-centred design practitioners), i.e. why, when, who, where and of course, how. As each organization described their needs we recorded each issue or explicit requirement on a Post-IT® note. At the end of the process we had gathered over 400 Post-ITs of which approximately 10 per cent were subsequently discarded as duplicates or irrelevant on closer inspection.

The trainers were then invited to create an affinity model which required them to sort the requirements/issues into logical groups: emerging groupings included the layout and configuration of the virtual ship, the appearance and functionality of the avatars and the context of use of the completed system. Throughout this process the software designer helped ground the requirements in reality. Informal discussion with the three trainers afterwards revealed that they thought that the day had gone well. The use of the Post-Its and their grouping was a familiar technique from other contexts, and had fostered engagement and apparent consensus. At the end of the first day we had succeeded in co-constructing an affinity model and subsequently a communications model and an artefact/physical model (ibid.) of the environment to be created.

Text, Color Schemes, Images, Copy and Virtual Bundles

Text, Color Schemes, Images, and Copy

If people feel good, they typically purchase more. With the convenience of having multiple stores at a shopper's fingertips, an online store must be inviting and must ensure that the customer feels comfortable to stay and purchase. The web also has the potential of becoming more like catalogs and having a more recreational aspect versus a pure product hunt.

Effective online merchandising considers advertisement and newspaper techniques. They start with the most important attributes and put them in the headlines and sub-headlines. These same techniques must be applied online—with the most important customer benefits up top as the headline.

Some products are complex to describe, such as those with textures and other sensory attributes that would make the sale in retail. A silky, luxurious blouse in rich colors can be described with words and images, but subtle variations in the difference between sueded-silk and satin may not be easily described. Magnifying glass "close up" techniques can give a deeper view. This technique, coupled with appropriate copy writing and other imagery, can enhance product details and simulate the retail environment. For expensive items, such as a large line of name-brand quality clothing, you may consider providing a swatch sample for your shoppers to order prior to purchasing.

Virtual Bundles—E-kits

Special product bundles have been a retail strategy to stimulate sales. Bundles consist of two or more products or a product with a special offer. At retail, physical bundles are created by putting two or more products into the same box or by strapping the products together to form a "hard" bundle. A new SKU number is created and assigned to the new "package" so it can be stocked, inventoried, and merchandised.

Online stores have an advantage over retail because they can create "virtual" bundles. Virtual bundles put the products or special offers together on the product detail page—the online "package." The virtual bundle is also assigned a new SKU number. Fulfillment can be notified to "pick and pack" those items that make up the bundle. Virtual bundles save on production costs and labor, because a physical hard-bundled product is not required. A hard bundle is created virtually through putting the separate items into the same shipping box.

These elkits require special merchandising treatments, however, because they are mot physically bundled items in one package. New photos may be required to show the bundle contents. All product categories are eligible for bundling. Dresses with handbags, crafts with tools, printers with cartridges, and dog food with dog toys are a few combinations. Bundles are limited only by the imagination and distribution capabilities. Bundles provide you a competitive advantage by providing "new" exclusive items for your target customers.