Graphics and Human Computer Interfaces Commons^™

Digital Reflections: Evaluating Body Dissatisfaction In Xr Through Eye- And Body-Tracked Virtual Humans, Deyrel Diaz

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In an era where digital and physical realities increasingly intertwine, the perception of body image is undergoing a significant transformation. Traditional understandings of body dissatisfaction, long studied in relation to psychological distress and eating disorders, are now being reshaped by technologies such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Artificially Intelligent (AI)- generated media. These technologies have introduced novel ways of experiencing and interacting with the human form, raising critical questions about their impact on self-perception and internalization of beauty standards.

As virtual representations become more prevalent in entertainment, social media, and interactive platforms, it is becoming more crucial …

Examining The Roles Of Embodiment And Theory Of Mind In Shaping User Perceptions Of Llm-Driven Conversational Agents, Elizabeth A. Schlesener

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Large Language Models (LLMs) have advanced conversational agents, enabling natural, human-like interactions in domains such as education, programming, and workplace collaboration. Yet, user distrust persists over privacy, accuracy, and bias. As developers work to mitigate these issues and human-AI collaboration expands, reinforcing trust in LLM-driven systems is essential. To address this problem, this dissertation explores the role of anthropomorphic form in LLM-driven conversational agents and its impact on user perception.

According to the familiarity thesis, humans attribute human-like characteristics to nonhuman entities — a process known as anthropomorphism — to better comprehend unfamiliar phenomena, based on the assumption that they …

Revolutionizing Digital Privacy Education For Older Adults: Enhanced Interventions And Ai-Assisted Learning Strategies, Heba Aly

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As older adults increasingly engage with digital platforms, they face unique privacy risks stemming from limited digital literacy, reduced trust in AI technologies, and constrained access—especially in rural or underserved communities. While digital tools offer benefits like social connection and information access, current privacy education efforts often neglect the needs of older adults. This dissertation addresses this gap by developing, testing, and refining digital privacy education interventions tailored for older adults, with a focus on trust, personalization, and AI-assisted learning.

Study 1 evaluates multiple instructional modalities across age groups, revealing older adults prefer structured videos and interactive tutorials, while younger …

Strengthening The Bonds Between Us: An Empirical Investigation Of Morale In Human-Ai Teams And The Socially Supportive Ai Teammates Who Empower It, Rohit Mallick

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This dissertation investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) can be designed to improve the collective emotion within a team. A team's collective emotion, or morale, describes how motivated, optimistic, and enthusiastic the group is in accomplishing its goals. We conducted four studies that compared different social support strategies that AI teammates can provide to the team. Study 1A found that AI teammates who communicate with emotions can better motivate human team members and promote awareness of team dynamics and environmental changes. Study 1B found that human teammates become more motivated and happier when their AI teammates express joy and are close …

A System And Method For Measuring Spatially Varying Surface Appearances With A Study Of Feathers, Jessica Baron-Lis

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Real-world materials, particularly biological structures such as feathers exhibit complex appearances that vary spatially across their surfaces. The field of computer graphics provides a means of understanding such surfaces through material modeling which uses both analytical models and data acquired from light-surface interactions. There are many efforts within the past decade in measuring materials for graphics, but common limitations in these works include not accounting for spatially varying properties and reliance on neural networks and synthetic datasets.

Feathers from modern birds present diverse appearances due to how light interacts with their unique hierarchical microstructures. Variations in those structures lead to …

Real-Time Motion Augmentation And Synthesis For Animating The Hands And Eyes Of Virtual Humans And Avatars, Ryan Canales

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Virtual Reality (VR) enables users to interact within virtual worlds via an embodied virtual representation of themselves called an “avatar”. Because avatars are essential for immersive experiences, it is important to consider how altering or augmenting avatar motion affects virtual experiences. This dissertation aims to improve virtual experiences by addressing some of the many challenges in animating avatars and virtual humans.

In our first study, we addressed the lack of tactile feedback during virtual grasping by using visual feedback techniques. We augmented the avatar’s hand motion to remain outside virtual objects (“outer hand”) even when the user’s hand penetrated them. …

Changes In Near-Field Perception And Reaching Behavior In Virtual Environments Over Time, Kristopher C. Kohm

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Near-field perception and reaching capabilities are fundamental for most interactions in immersive virtual environments (IVEs). To perform actions in IVEs accurately and efficiently, virtual reality (VR) users need to be able to adapt to changes in their perception. Some of these perceptual differences may be inherent to virtual environments, such as the difference in depth perception between the virtual and non-virtual worlds. Others may be deliberate alterations to the user's action capabilities or to their surroundings to make interactions easier. Both the alterations and the user's ability to adjust to them may change over time as they gain experience in …

We Train Ai, Why Not Humans, Too? An Exploration Of Human-Ai Team Training For Future Workplace Viability, Caitlin M. Lancaster

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The integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workforce is transforming team dynamics, leading to the emergence of Human-AI Teams (HATs). These teams offer opportunities to capitalize on human strengths with AI's prowess, offering significant opportunities for innovation and efficiency. Effective HAT functioning requires aligning human expectations with AI capabilities and bridging knowledge gaps between teammates. Despite this potential, key integration challenges remain, such as developing shared mental models, addressing skill limitations, and overcoming negative AI perceptions. Existing training efforts often apply human-human teaming principles directly to HATs, overlooking AI's role as a teammate and limiting the development of HAT-specific …

Leveraging Artificial Intelligence For Team Cognition In Human-Ai Teams, Beau Schelble

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Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have enabled AI to be applied across a wide variety of new fields like cryptography, art, and data analysis. Several of these fields are social in nature, including decision-making and teaming, which introduces a new set of challenges for AI research. While each of these fields has its unique challenges, the area of human-AI teaming is beset with many that center around the expectations and abilities of AI teammates. One such challenge is understanding team cognition in these human-AI teams and AI teammates' ability to contribute towards, support, and encourage it. Team cognition is …

Understanding The Role Of Interactivity And Explanation In Adaptive Experiences, Lijie Guo

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Adaptive experiences have been an active area of research in the past few decades, accompanied by advances in technology such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. Whether the currently ongoing research on adaptive experiences has focused on personalization algorithms, explainability, user engagement, or privacy and security, there is growing interest and resources in developing and improving these research focuses. Even though the research on adaptive experiences has been dynamic and rapidly evolving, achieving a high level of user engagement in adaptive experiences remains a challenge. %????? This dissertation aims to uncover ways to engage users in adaptive experiences by incorporating …

All Hands On Deck: Choosing Virtual End Effector Representations To Improve Near Field Object Manipulation Interactions In Extended Reality, Roshan Venkatakrishnan

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Extended reality, or "XR", is the adopted umbrella term that is heavily gaining traction to collectively describe Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR), and Mixed reality (MR) technologies. Together, these technologies extend the reality that we experience either by creating a fully immersive experience like in VR or by blending in the virtual and "real" worlds like in AR and MR.

The sustained success of XR in the workplace largely hinges on its ability to facilitate efficient user interactions. Similar to interacting with objects in the real world, users in XR typically interact with virtual integrants like objects, menus, windows, …

The Effects Of Primary And Secondary Task Workloads On Cybersickness In Immersive Virtual Active Exploration Experiences, Rohith Venkatakrishnan

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Virtual reality (VR) technology promises to transform humanity. The technology enables users to explore and interact with computer-generated environments that can be simulated to approximate or deviate from reality. This creates an endless number of ways to propitiously apply the technology in our lives. It follows that large technological conglomerates are pushing for the widespread adoption of VR, financing the creation of the Metaverse - a hypothetical representation of the next iteration of the internet.

Even with VR technology's continuous growth, its widespread adoption remains long overdue. This can largely be attributed to an affliction called cybersickness, an analog to …

Accessible Virtual Reality For Older Adults, Aaron Gluck

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Virtual reality (VR) has grown significantly since the commercial release of the Oculus Rift in March 2016. This growth accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic, revolutionizing how individuals and businesses work, socialize, exercise, and stay entertained. However, commercial VR systems are not designed to be accessible to people with disabilities. While researchers have explored aspects of VR accessibility for people with disabilities, there is minimal research on accessible VR for older adults. Older adults (65+) self-report the highest rate of disabilities which may result in VR accessibility barriers, making this the ideal group to study the accessibility of VR.

This dissertation …

Developing And Facilitating Temporary Team Mental Models Through An Information-Sharing Recommender System, Geoffrey Musick

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It is well understood that teams are essential and common in many aspects of life, both work and leisure. Due to the importance of teams, much research attention has focused on how to improve team processes and outcomes. Of particular interest are the cognitive aspects of teamwork including team mental models (TMMs). Among many other benefits, TMMs involve team members forming a compatible understanding of the task and team in order to more efficiently make decisions. This understanding is sometimes classified using four TMM domains: equipment (e.g., operating procedures), task (e.g., strategies), team interactions (e.g., interdependencies) and teammates (e.g., tendencies). …

Evaluating Privacy Adaptation Presentation Methods To Support Social Media Users In Their Privacy-Related Decision-Making Process, Moses Namara

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Several privacy scholars have advocated for user-tailored privacy (UTP). A privacy-enhancing adaptive privacy approach to help reconcile users' lack of awareness, privacy management skills and motivation to use available platform privacy features with their need for personalized privacy support in alignment with their privacy preferences. The idea behind UTP is to measure users' privacy characteristics and behaviors, use these measurements to create a personalized model of the user's privacy preferences, and then provide adaptive support to the user in navigating and engaging with the available privacy settings---or even implement certain settings automatically on the user's behalf. To this end, most …

Fair, Equitable, And Just: A Socio-Technical Approach To Online Safety, Daricia Wilkinson

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Socio-technical systems have been revolutionary in reshaping how people maintain relationships, learn about new opportunities, engage in meaningful discourse, and even express grief and frustrations. At the same time, these systems have been central in the proliferation of harmful behaviors online as internet users are confronted with serious and pervasive threats at alarming rates. Although researchers and companies have attempted to develop tools to mitigate threats, the perception of dominant (often Western) frameworks as the standard for the implementation of safety mechanisms fails to account for imbalances, inequalities, and injustices in non-Western civilizations like the Caribbean. Therefore, in this dissertation …

Designing And Evaluating Accessible E-Learning For Students With Visual Impairments In K-12 Computing Education, Earl W. Huff Jr

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This dissertation explores the pathways for making K-12 computing education more accessible for blind or visually impaired (BVI) learners. As computer science (CS) expands into K-12 education, more concerted efforts are required to ensure all students have equitable access to opportunities to pursue a career in computing. To determine their viability with BVI learners, I conducted three studies to assess current accessibility in CS curricula, materials, and learning environments. Study one was interviews with visually impaired developers; study two was interviews with K-12 teachers of visually impaired students; study three was a remote observation within a computer science course. My …