News
12 December 2014
Learn to wear an airline life vest with our new app
Today we have launched our new Life Vest app, freely available for all major smartphone and tablet platforms (Android, Apple, Windows Mobile). In three different game levels, you interact with the game character to make it wear the life vest properly and to jump out of the plane alive. You can also face time challenges and compare your results with those of other players. The 3D model of the life vest is a high-fidelity reproduction of a real vest used by many airlines.
07 October 2014
Anxiety induction in Virtual Reality
Our laboratory has conducted a study on anxiety induction in Virtual Reality, showing that the exploitation of auditory heartbeat biofeedback is an effective technique for generating anxiety in users. These results appear in a paper that has just been published by the Interacting with Computers journal. It has also been featured in the Science section of Slashdot.
20 August 2014
Effectiveness of mobile breathing training apps
Hundreds of mobile apps for breathing training are available in on-line stores but no one had evaluated their effectiveness so far. Our lab has thus conducted a study of a mobile breathing training app focusing on users’ physiological parameters as well as subjective perception. Results show how different graphical representations of the breathing process can contribute to the effectiveness of the app. These results have been collected in a paper that has just been published by the Computers in Human Behavior journal.
24 July 2014
NeuroImage publishes a Virtual Reality experiment carried out at our lab
The fMRI brain study of one of our Virtual Reality experiences that simulates life-threatening situations has been published by NeuroImage, a top neuroscience journal. The experience requires users to survive a serious fire emergency in a building, and puts them in a situation in which they have to choose between saving a virtual character trapped under a heavy cabinet or reaching the exit of the building. The results of the paper show differences in brain activity between users who escaped the building and users who helped the virtual character. These results have been featured on Wired as well as the Science section of Slashdot.
16 July 2014
Importance of evaluating the Placebo Effect in Affective Computing studies
The International Journal of Human-Computer Studies has just published our recent evaluation of different virtual character control systems based on user's physiology (read the news) that highlights the importance of including a Placebo condition in Affective Computing studies. Our paper has been featured on the Science section of Slashdot.
12 June 2014
Game characters controlled by user’s emotions
We have conducted a laboratory study to evaluate different methods to control the behavior of a virtual character through user’s physiological signals in a game for relaxation training (see video). The character control system has been featured on popular Web sites like Rock-Paper-Shotgun and the Games section of Slashdot.
11 April 2014
Brace for impact with our interactive app
This week our lab has released the Learn to Brace app for all major mobile
and desktop operating systems. This first public game for aircraft passengers' safety is generating a lot of interest, and the news is being discusses on several popular Web sites, including Gizmodo, Slashdot and Fark.
03 April 2014
Luca Chittaro's speech is on TED.com
The speech on technostress by our lab director is now available on TED.com. You can watch it here.
18 March 2014
Computer-Supported Mindfulness
Our lab is the first to conduct a laboratory study of the effectiveness of mindfulness apps. The paper has been published by the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies and shows that the studied app is more effective than traditional non-interactive methods on a sample of novice meditators.
01 February 2014
TIME features a virtual reality experiment carried out at our lab
Jeffrey Kluger, Editor at Large for TIME, the weekly news magazine with the largest world's circulation, reflects about
the implications of the virtual reality experiment that took place at our lab in cooperation with SISSA Social Neuroscience Lab. His article can be read from TIME website, while the technical description of the experiment is at this link.