Developing a Multimodal Entertainment Tool with Intuitive Navigation, Hands-Free Control, and Avatar Features, to Increase User Interactivity

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that many traditional instructional techniques may unnecessarily overload limited working memory and impede learning. Based on cognitive load theory, it was hypothesised that instructional design only takes on a crucial role when there is a high level of interaction between learning elements resulting in those elements having to be simultaneously held in working memory. When there is little, if any, interaction between individual learning elements, then the format of presentation should be inconsequential. These hypotheses were tested using a computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacture (CAD/CAM) package with trainees from a Sydney company. Results showed that when instructions involved high element interactivity, a self-contained manual that physically integrated disparate information and did not require the use of the computer hardware was vastly superior to instructional formats that involved continual interaction with the computer. No differences were found between instructional formats when the learning material entailed low element interactivity. Evidence that these findings were due to cognitive load rather than other factors came from secondary task analysis. In light of these and previous results, suggestions are made for cognitively guided instructional packages.

Contrary to system-controlled multimedia learning environments, hypermedia systems are characterized by a high level of interactivity. This interactivity is referred to as learner control in the respective literature. For several reasons this learner control is seen as a major advantage of hypermedia for learning and instruction. For instance, learner control might increase students’ interest and motivation, facilitate adaptive instruction, or provide affordances for active and constructive information processing. In this paper we analyze the instructional potentials of learner-controlled hypermedia environments as well as possible reasons for the ambiguous results of studies that have aimed at determining the effectiveness of hypermedia learning. According to our analysis, the potential effectiveness of self-controlled learning with hypermedia might be difficult to demonstrate due to (1) usability problems (i.e., disorientation, distraction, cognitive overload), (2) moderating learner characteristics (i.e., prior knowledge, self-regulatory skills, cognitive styles, and attitudes towards learning), (3) a lack of conceptual foundations, and (4) methodological shortcomings of many hypermedia studies. The findings reviewed in this paper and the corresponding claim that hypermedia may be effective only if used in a sensible way are used to derive a couple of guidelines for further research on hypermedia learning.

The affordance of immersive virtual reality (VR) holds great potential for education, supporting learning through simulation and visualization. However, the literature on STEM education indicates that VR learning is not necessarily more effective than traditional learning, because participants are immersed in learning environments with high visual loads, which increases cognitive load, resulting in poor learning outcomes. In addition, VR studies rarely evaluate learner performance in physical hands-on activities after participating in VR learning programs. Therefore, in this study, we seek to reduce cognitive load by incorporating feedback into the VR learning environment. This study conducts a quasi-experiment and proposes a VR learning environment for embedded electronic circuits and a practical hands-on task, to investigate learners’ learning performance on practical hands-on task skills and their cognitive load. Participants were randomly assigned to groups with and without feedback. The results show that feedback in the VR environment is effective in reducing participants’ extraneous cognitive load and increasing engagement, with fewer trial-and-error times in the learning units and better performance in the physical hands-on task.

Immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly used in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education, yet their effects on student engagement, cognitive load, and transfer of learning remain fragmented. This systematic review synthesized empirical research on AR and VR in STEM learning environments to examine how these technologies influence behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement; intrinsic, extraneous, and germane cognitive load; and near- and far-transfer outcomes. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, we searched major education and psychology databases for studies involving AR/VR STEM interventions with quantified engagement, cognitive load, or transfer measures. Twenty studies met the inclusion criteria. Across the sample, immersive technologies consistently enhanced student engagement, particularly by increasing interest, enjoyment, and time-on-task, although effects on deeper cognitive engagement were more variable. Augmented reality frequently reduced extraneous cognitive load by integrating digital information directly into physical learning tasks, whereas fully immersive virtual reality sometimes increased overall mental effort when environments were perceptually rich or navigation demands were high. Transfer of learning outcomes was generally positive but modest: most studies reported gains in near transfer, defined here as applying what was learned to tasks or problems that closely resemble the original learning context, while evidence for far transfer, defined as applying learning to novel, more complex, or substantially different situations, was limited and inconsistently assessed. Taken together, the findings indicate that immersive technologies most reliably improve student engagement and near-transfer learning in STEM when instructional design deliberately manages cognitive load, rather than relying on immersion alone to produce learning gains. These results underscore the importance of aligning immersive features with targeted learning goals and providing structured guidance and reflection to support meaningful transfer of learning.

Case study: Developing a SharePoint 2010 strategy… or how setting it up and “getting it out there” is not a strategy

Automatic cognitive load evaluation using writing features: An exploratory study

In an increasingly fragmented mobile app ecosystem, users are faced with the challenge of choosing between streamlined, specialized applications and multifunctional but visually overloaded superapps. This paper investigates why users often prefer the latter, using Kaspi.kz in Kazakhstan as a case study. Drawing upon Cognitive Load Theory and the Paradox of Choice, the study explores how superapps minimize extraneous cognitive load and decision fatigue by offering a unified interface for diverse tasks. Despite potential usability concerns, factors such as transactional efficiency, data-driven personalization, and perceived trust play a key role in user preference. A mixed-methods experimental design is proposed to evaluate usability, efficiency, satisfaction, and trust across both app categories. Preliminary findings from the Kaspi.kz case suggest that its design, though complex, successfully mitigates interface clutter through intuitive navigation and responsiveness. Ultimately, this study argues that the appeal of superapps lies in their ability to simplify digital life, turning potential disadvantages into key advantages.

Typing is fundamental to our daily lives, particularly at work. Virtual reality (VR) technology has seen increasing interest in incorporating it into job training and rehabilitation programs. The concept of this study involves displaying the effect of virtual hands on a user's view in VR environment to mimic their real-time hand movements. The main objective of this study was to investigate muscle activity and task performance with and without virtual hand representation during VR typing tasks. As part of the study, wireless electromyography (EMG) sensors were used to measure the left and right neck splenius capitis muscles' activity (LSC and RSC), and typing performance was measured in terms of actual and net typing speed (WPM) and accuracy percentage (%). In addition, the NASA-TLX subjective workload scale was used to compare the users' mental workload with and without the virtual hand representations. This study involved 15 participants (7 females and 8 males), all over the age between 18 and 30 years who participated voluntarily and had no symptoms of musculoskeletal disorders or back/neck pain within 7 days of participation. During the study, participants were randomly assigned to two conditions: typing in VR with and without virtual hand representation. The Oculus Quest 2 VR headset and a Logitech k830 Bluetooth keyboard were utilized. A typing test was conducted using typingtest.com with five minutes of typing per condition. The results of the study indicated that virtual hand representation had a positive effect on typing performance, resulting in significantly higher typing speed (125.86% higher net speed) and accuracy (1.63% higher) compared to the condition without virtual hand representation. Additionally, the study found that typing in VR with virtual hand representation resulted in a significantly higher normalized muscle activities (% maximum voluntary contractions) of the neck muscles (17% higher for LSC and 19.58% higher for RSC) than in VR without virtual hand representation. Participants showed significantly lower NASA-TLX values with the virtual hand representation. In other words, lower mental demand was recorded during typing tasks with virtual hand representation. The findings of this study suggested that the presence of virtual hands for typing in VR resulted in more active typing behavior and improved performance. Increasing neck muscle activities during virtual hand representation could be associated with more active typing behavior and improved performance. Furthermore, participants perceived the virtual hand representation condition to be less mentally demanding due to the increased sensory feedback provided. Virtual hand representation was able to enhance typing efficiency, although further design configuration and improvement will be required to improve typing speed. With more realistic virtual hand representations, haptic feedback, and customizing virtual hand size and position to match the user's real hand size and position, virtual hand representation can be more effective in typing.

Successful decision making often requires weighing a given option's costs against its associated benefits, an ability that appears perturbed in virtually every severe mental illness. Animal models of such cost/benefit decision making overwhelmingly implicate mesolimbic dopamine in our willingness to exert effort for a larger reward. Until recently, however, animal models have invariably manipulated the degree of physical effort, whereas human studies of effort have primarily relied on cognitive costs. Dopamine's relationship to cognitive effort has not been directly examined, nor has the relationship between individuals' willingness to expend mental versus physical effort. It is therefore unclear whether willingness to work hard in one domain corresponds to willingness in the other. Here we utilize a rat cognitive effort task (rCET), wherein animals can choose to allocate greater visuospatial attention for a greater reward, and a previously established physical effort-discounting task (EDT) to examine dopaminergic and noradrenergic contributions to effort. The dopamine antagonists eticlopride and SCH23390 each decreased willingness to exert physical effort on the EDT; these drugs had no effect on willingness to exert mental effort for the rCET. Preference for the high effort option correlated across the two tasks, although this effect was transient. These results suggest that dopamine is only minimally involved in cost/benefit decision making with cognitive effort costs. The constructs of mental and physical effort may therefore comprise overlapping, but distinct, circuitry, and therapeutic interventions that prove efficacious in one effort domain may not be beneficial in another.

Attention, automaticity, and developmental dyscalculia.

BackgroundMental workload is an abstract concept that perceives cognition as the brain having a small and finite capacity to process information, with high levels of workload associated with poor performance and error. While an individual may be able to complete two different tasks individually, a combination of tasks may lead to cognitive overload and poor performance. In many high-risk industries, it is common to measure mental workload and then to redesign tasks until cognitive overload is avoided. This study aimed to measure the effect of multitasking on the mental workload and performance of medical students completing single and combined clinical tasks.MethodsMedical students who had completed basic clinical skills training in a single undergraduate Medical School completed four standardised tasks for a total of four minutes each, consisting of: inactivity, listening, venepuncture and a combination of listening and venepuncture. Task performance was measured using standard binary checklists and with mental workload measured using a secondary task method.ResultsThe tasks were successfully completed by 40 subjects and as expected, mental workload increased with task complexity. Combining the two tasks showed no difference in the associated mental workload and performance at venepuncture (p = 0.082) However, during the combined task, listening appeared to deteriorate (p < 0.001).ConclusionsIf staff are expected to simultaneously complete multiple tasks then they may preferentially shed communication tasks in order to maintain their performance of physical tasks, leading to the appearance of poor communication skills. Although this is a small-scale study in medical students it suggests that the active assessment and management of clinician workload in busy clinical settings may be an effective strategy to improve doctor-patient communication.

I spy with my AI: The effects of AI-based visual cueing on human operators’ performance and cognitive load in CCTV control rooms

Some organizations have begun to implement more unproctored mobile talent assessment methods in addition to traditional computer-based assessment, requiring new human-computer interaction constructs, methods, and approaches. Usability testing and assessments of user satisfaction and mental workload and the technology's effectiveness and efficiency are critical before implementing new methods of assessments. Initial results of this study provide some initial positive implications for organizations to adopt the use of well-designed mobile-based talent assessments.

Human emotion recognition has been widely used and intensively studied in many areas such as e-Commerce, online education, healthcare, human-computer interaction and recently human-centric software engineering (HCSE). HCSE investigates human factors in the entire software development lifecycle, and human emotion can be used in many scenarios such as requirement gathering and usability testing. However, even though existing studies have already shown the advantages of emotion recognition with multi-source data such as text, audio and video, the current research and practice in HCSE are primarily based on single-source data. In addition, emotion recognition in HCSE faces several challenges such as multiple participants, changing environments and real-time requirement. To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes Edge4Emotion, a novel edge computing-based multisource human emotion recognition platform for HCSE. Edge4Emotion takes the advantage of the edge computing paradigm to efficiently support the collection of multi-source data such as audio, video and physiological data from various IoT devices, and emotion recognition with both single- and multisource models. As an on-going project, this paper focuses on the platform design and the preliminary evaluation of the platform with representative emotion recognition applications. The platform will be further extended to include more multi-source learning models and serve as an open-source platform for the development and evaluation of multi-source emotion recognition models for HCSE.

We have investigated the possibilities of using theatre, including professional actors, scriptwriters and artistic directors, within requirements gathering, and usability testing, and for communicating the results of such work to the design community, or individual designers. The research on which we will report focuses on older people, but we believe that a consideration of the issues involved in designing for this group highlights many of the challenges found in CHI research more generally, and the techniques can apply to usability testing, and to communicating the findings of such research and testing to designers.