Over the next 10 years, the City of Amsterdam plans to develop major housing schemes provide 90,000 new homes within the existing urban fabric. At the same time, an urban renewal program is being launched to revitalize the most deprived neighbourhoods. Together, these challenges call for more evidence based designprinciples to secure liveable places. Recent development in neuroscience, provides innovative tools to examine in a measurable, cause-effect way, the relationships between the physical fabric, users’ (visual) experience and their behavior in public spaces. In neuroscience, eye-tracking technology (ET) complements brain and behavioral measures (for overview see Eckstein et al. 2017). ET is already used to evaluate the spatial orienting of attention, behavioral response and emotional and cognitive impact in neuroscience, psychology and market research (Popa et al. 2015). ET may also radically change the way we (re)design and thus, experience cities (Sita et al. 2016; Andreani 2017). Until now, eye-tracking pilot studies collected eye fixation patterns of architecture using images in a lab-setting (Lebrun 2016).In our research project Sensing Streetscapes, we take eye-tracking outdoors and explore the potential ET may offer for city design. In collaboration with the municipality of Amsterdam and the local community, the H-neighborhood is used as a single case study. The main focus for urban renewal lies in the “transition-spaces”. They connect the neighborhood with the rapidly developing adjacent areas and are vital for improving the weak social-economic status. The commonly used design principles are validated (Alexander et al. 1977; Gehl 2011, 2014; Pallasmaa 2012) and the consistency of ET is tested, alongside (walk along) interviews and behavioral observations. In the next phase, the data will be analyzed by a panel of applied psychologists and urban designers. The initial results provide valuable lessons for the use of eye-tracking in urban design research. For example, a visual pattern analysis offers more accurate images of the spatial key-elements that matter when moving through transition spaces. More sensory-based city design research is needed to gather a full understanding of the relationships between the configuration of space, users’ (visual) experience, behavioral responses and in turn, perceptual decision making.
Older adults experience visual problems owing to biological ageing or eye disease. In the Netherlands, the prevalence of visual impairments is the highest in the subgroup of nursing home residents (41.3%). These impairments influence quality of life in terms of limiting daily activities and participation in social activities. Furthermore, 63% of visual problems are defined as ‘avoidable blindness’. For this reason, screening of visual functioning in the nursing home is of major importance. Moreover, visual functioning should also be taken into account to prevent the incidence of falls.
Abstract Background Visuospatial neglect (VSN) is a cognitive disorder after stroke in which patients fail to consciously process and interact with contralesional stimuli. Visual Scanning Training (VST) is the recommended treatment in clinical guidelines. At the moment, several mixed reality versions of Visual Scanning Training (VST) are being developed. The aim of this study was to explore the opinions of end-users (i.e., therapists) on the use of Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in VSN treatment. Methods Therapists played one VR and two AR Serious Games, and subsequently flled out a questionnaire on User Experience, Usability, and Implementation. Results Sixteen therapists (psychologists, occupational, speech, and physiotherapists) played the games, thirteen of them evaluated the games. Therapists saw great potential in all three games, yet there was room for improvement on the level of usability, especially for tailoring the games to the patient’s needs. Therapists’ opinions were comparable between VR and AR Serious Games. For implementation, therapists stressed the urgency of clear guidelines and instructions. Discussion Even though VR/AR technology is promising for VSN treatment, there is no one-size-fts-all applicability. It may thus be crucial to move towards a plethora of training environments rather than a single standardized mixed reality neglect treatment. Conclusion As therapists see the potential value of mixed reality, it remains important to investigate the efcacy of AR and VR training tools.
The main aim of the project is to provide new research in the arts by focusing on the concept of the inter-sensorial as an essential text for the creation of art and culture. It is designed to foreground the role of the sensorium as an underpinning source for many aspects of thought and cultural heritage. This project will blend visual arts with applied arts and traditional local traditions, revealing new light on the artistic facets and customs which are usually overlooked.The extended residencies will promote transnational mobility for emerging artists, facilitating international relationships between different artistic and cultural contexts within the EU. This will promote transnational interconnectivity between artists and cultures, creating a resourceful intercultural fertilisation, endorsing cultural diversity, social inclusion and most of all, further research on the intercultural facets.Through the various side-activities to take place during the mobilities of the artists, the project aims to strengthen and develop diverse audiences by producing the necessary elements for a dialogue, illustrating interpretations of rich layers of tangible and intangible heritage and legacies of European countries related to the tradition of sensorial experiences and how they evolved around traditional customs. Furthermore, it also aims to rethink and project new and innovative ways for documenting, preserving and communicating data to different audiences.
Everyone has the right to participate in society to the best of their ability. This right also applies to people with a visual impairment, in combination with a severe or profound intellectual and possibly motor disability (VISPIMD). However, due to their limitations, for their participation these people are often highly dependent on those around them, such as family members andhealthcare professionals. They determine how people with VISPIMD participate and to what extent. To optimize this support, they must have a good understanding of what people with disabilities can still do with their remaining vision.It is currently difficult to gain insight into the visual abilities of people with disabilities, especially those with VISPIMD. As a professional said, "Everything we can think of or develop to assess the functional vision of this vulnerable group will help improve our understanding and thus our ability to support them. Now, we are more or less guessing about what they can see.Moreover, what little we know about their vision is hard to communicate to other professionals”. Therefore, there is a need for methods that can provide insight into the functional vision of people with VISPIMD, in order to predict their options in daily life situations. This is crucial knowledge to ensure that these people can participate in society to their fullest extent.What makes it so difficult to get this insight at the moment? Visual impairments can be caused by a range of eye or brain disorders and can manifest in various ways. While we understand fairly well how low vision affects a person's abilities on relatively simple visual tasks, it is much more difficult to predict this in more complex dynamic everyday situations such asfinding your way or moving around during daily activities. This is because, among other things, conventional ophthalmic tests provide little information about what people can do with their remaining vision in everyday life (i.e., their functional vision).An additional problem in assessing vision in people with intellectual disabilities is that many conventional tests are difficult to perform or are too fatiguing, resulting in either no or the wrong information. In addition to their visual impairment, there is also a very serious intellectual disability (possibly combined with a motor impairment), which makes it even more complex to assesstheir functional vision. Due to the interplay between their visual, intellectual, and motor disabilities, it is almost impossible to determine whether persons are unable to perform an activity because they do not see it, do not notice it, do not understand it, cannot communicate about it, or are not able to move their head towards the stimulus due to motor disabilities.Although an expert professional can make a reasonable estimate of the functional possibilities through long-term and careful observation, the time and correct measurement data are usually lacking to find out the required information. So far, it is insufficiently clear what people with VZEVMB provoke to see and what they see exactly.Our goal with this project is to improve the understanding of the visual capabilities of people with VISPIMD. This then makes it possible to also improve the support for participation of the target group. We want to achieve this goal by developing and, in pilot form, testing a new combination of measurement and analysis methods - primarily based on eye movement registration -to determine the functional vision of people with VISPIMD. Our goal is to systematically determine what someone is responding to (“what”), where it may be (“where”), and how much time that response will take (“when”). When developing methods, we take the possibilities and preferences of the person in question as a starting point in relation to the technological possibilities.Because existing technological methods were originally developed for a different purpose, this partly requires adaptation to the possibilities of the target group.The concrete end product of our pilot will be a manual with an overview of available technological methods (as well as the methods themselves) for assessing functional vision, linked to the specific characteristics of the target group in the cognitive, motor area: 'Given that a client has this (estimated) combination of limitations (cognitive, motor and attention, time in whichsomeone can concentrate), the order of assessments is as follows:' followed by a description of the methods. We will also report on our findings in a workshop for professionals, a Dutch-language article and at least two scientific articles. This project is executed in the line: “I am seen; with all my strengths and limitations”. During the project, we closely collaborate with relevant stakeholders, i.e. the professionals with specific expertise working with the target group, family members of the persons with VISPIMD, and persons experiencing a visual impairment (‘experience experts’).
Physical rehabilitation programs revolve around the repetitive execution of exercises since it has been proven to lead to better rehabilitation results. Although beginning the motor (re)learning process early is paramount to obtain good recovery outcomes, patients do not normally see/experience any short-term improvement, which has a toll on their motivation. Therefore, patients find it difficult to stay engaged in seemingly mundane exercises, not only in terms of adhering to the rehabilitation program, but also in terms of proper execution of the movements. One way in which this motivation problem has been tackled is to employ games in the rehabilitation process. These games are designed to reward patients for performing the exercises correctly or regularly. The rewards can take many forms, for instance providing an experience that is engaging (fun), one that is aesthetically pleasing (appealing visual and aural feedback), or one that employs gamification elements such as points, badges, or achievements. However, even though some of these serious game systems are designed together with physiotherapists and with the patients’ needs in mind, many of them end up not being used consistently during physical rehabilitation past the first few sessions (i.e. novelty effect). Thus, in this project, we aim to 1) Identify, by means of literature reviews, focus groups, and interviews with the involved stakeholders, why this is happening, 2) Develop a set of guidelines for the successful deployment of serious games for rehabilitation, and 3) Develop an initial implementation process and ideas for potential serious games. In a follow-up application, we intend to build on this knowledge and apply it in the design of a (set of) serious game for rehabilitation to be deployed at one of the partners centers and conduct a longitudinal evaluation to measure the success of the application of the deployment guidelines.
