Being There - Concepts, Effects and Measurements of User Presence in Synthetic Environments

by G Riva, F Davide, W a Ijsselsteijn

Overview

"Presence", the sense of "being there" in a mediated environment, has been applied to describe the user experience when interacting with advanced media interfaces such as virtual environments. Why examine the concept of presence? There are compelling practical and theoretical reasons. The definition of the construct of presence is of particular interest today because it has the potential relevance for the design and evaluation of a broad range of interactive and non-interactive media and applications in several areas such as medicine, entertainment, education and training. An enhanced sense of presence plays an important role in technologies such as the video telephone, high definition television (HDTV), 3G portable phones, home and arcade video games, the World Wide Web, and more. The book examines the different facets of the concept of presence. It begins by noting practical and theoretical reasons for studying this concept. Different theories of presence are identified and a detailed description of the concepts included in these conceptualizations is presented. Existing research and about the factors that encourage or discourage a sense of presence in media users as well as the physiological and psychological effects of presence are then outlined. Finally, suggestions concerning possible evolutions of this concept allowed by the diffusion of ambient intelligence and 3G portable communication are presented.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781586033019
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
Publication date:	01/01/2003
Series:	Studies on New Technologies & Practices in Communication
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.81(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface	v
	Introduction	ix
	Contributors	xv
Section I.	Presence: Past, Present and Future
Chapter 1.	Being There: The Experience of Presence in Mediated Environments	3
Chapter 2.	Presence in the Past: What Can We Learn from Media History?	17
Chapter 3.	Engineering Presence: an Experimental Strategy	41
Chapter 4.	Presence 2010: the Emergence of Ambient Intelligence	59
Section II.	Presence: Theory and Methods
Chapter 5.	Staying There: an Activity-Based Approach to Narrative Design and Evaluation as an Antidote to Virtual Corpsing	85
Chapter 6.	On the Relationship between Presence and Usability: a Situated, Action-based Approach to Virtual Environments	97
Chapter 7.	Measuring Presence: Subjective, Behavioral and Physiological Methods	109
Chapter 8.	Quality of Experience in Virtual Environments	121
Chapter 9.	"Being there" and the Role of Presence Technology	137
Section III.	Presence in Practice: Applications
Chapter 10.	Are You with Us? The Role of Presence in Mixed Reality for Participatory Design	149
Chapter 11.	Sense of Presence in Virtual Training: Enhancing Skills Acquisition and Transfer of Knowledge through Learning Experience in Virtual Environments	167
Chapter 12.	User Presence in Mobile Environments	183
Chapter 13.	Persuasive Effects of Presence in Immersive Virtual Environments	191
Chapter 14.	Presence Technologies for Informal Collaboration	209
Chapter 15.	The Illusion of Being Creative	223
Chapter 16.	Presence in Industrial Virtual Environment Applications--Susceptibility and Measurement Reliability	237
Section IV.	Social Presence: Creating a Common Ground
Chapter 17.	Grounding "Subjective Views", Situation Awareness and Co-reference in Distance Learning	249
Chapter 18.	Supporting Social Presence Through Asynchronous Awareness Systems	261
Chapter 19.	Telewindows: Case Studies in Asymmetrical Social Presence	279
Chapter 20.	Interaction Manifestations in Multi-player Games	295
Chapter 21.	Real Time Text-to-Emotion Engine for Expressive Internet Communications	305
	Author Index	321