Authors:
Pablo Almajano
1
;
Enric Mayas
2
;
Inmaculada Rodriguez
2
;
Maite Lopez-Sanchez
2
and
Anna Puig
2
Affiliations:
1
CSIC and Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
;
2
Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
Keyword(s):
Virtual Environments, Human-agent Interactions, Usability.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Advanced User Interfaces
;
Augmented, Mixed and Virtual Environments
;
Computer Vision, Visualization and Computer Graphics
;
Evaluation of Human Performance and Usability in Virtual Environments
;
Interactive Environments
Abstract:
Humans in the Digital Age are continuously exploring different forms of socializing on-line. In Social 3D Virtual Worlds (VW) people freely socialize by participating in open-ended activities in 3D simulated spaces. Moreover, VWs can also be used to engage humans in e-applications, the so called Serious VWs. Implicitly, these serious applications have specific goals that require structured environments where participants play specific roles and perform activities by following well-defined protocols and norms. In this paper we advocate for the use of Virtual Institutions (VI) to provide explicit structure to current Social 3D VWs. We refer to the resulting system as hybrid (participants can be both human and software agents) and structured Virtual Environments. Specifically, we present v-mWater (a water market, an e-government application deployed as a VI), the infrastructure that supports participants’ interactions, and the evaluation of its usability.