Designing and developing wearables for virtual reality environments with a research through design process
In WEARTUAL, I will investigate and develop ways to integrate wearables into virtual reality (VR) environments in a way that enhance the immersiveness of the VR experience. In particular, I will investigate the possible functions and interaction modalities of wearables for providing an improved user experience in VR by developing prototypes and including users in the design process. As a result, I will obtain wearable prototypes, comprehensive user experience data and design guidelines that will inform the human-computer interaction (HCI) literature about the right ways  for designing wearables for VR environments. WEARTUAL is a user-oriented research through design project that will adopt an interdisciplinary approach by using the disciplines of interaction design, game design, product design, engineering and psychology. Mainly, I will adopt a research structure that encapsulates user inclusion, ideation, prototype development and user experience experiments and evaluations. In this project, I will transfer my knowledge of designing games, wearables and prototyping for design research activities, while supervision of Prof. Juho Hamari (Tampere University, Finland) will contribute to game design and gameful experience measurement. Prof. Hamari leads the Gamification Group (GG), an interdisciplinary team composed of 18 members whose research is focused on game research, gamification and immersive technologies, such as virtual and augmented reality. In this sense, his experience in leading complementary research teams will also help me develop as a leader for directing research groups. I will also closely collaborate with the members of the GG who are experienced in conducting research on and developing VR content.