Browsing by Author "Marques, Bernardo"

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    Beyond What is Visible: Enhancing Air Quality Awareness through Immersive Virtual Reality Visualizations
    (The Eurographics Association, 2023) Marques, Bernardo; Oliveira, Daniel; Leitão, João; Martins, Nuno Cid; Rafael, Sandra; Dias, Paulo; Santos, Beatriz Sousa; Abey Campbell; Claudia Krogmeier; Gareth Young
    The levels of air quality found in some cities are a growing concern for environmental, healthcare, and government organizations worldwide due to the rise of environmental pollution. Thus, novel solutions for raising population awareness are of paramount importance. This work describes a platform for visualizing air quality data using Virtual Reality (VR), allowing having an aerial view of a given location, enhanced with air quality layers with the goal of helping raise awareness during education classes, fairs, or events. Using distinct visualization techniques, users can navigate through a map, position themselves in different points of view, and contemplate how air pollution is hiding from their view in the physical world, as well as filter using several parameters, e.g., removing roads, buildings, or displaying only a specific data range for a given period in time.
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    Seeing Clearly: A Situated Air Quality Visualization with AR Egocentric Viewpoint Extension
    (The Eurographics Association, 2023) Martins, Nuno C.; Marques, Bernardo; Rafael, Sandra; Dias, Paulo; Santos, Beatriz Sousa; Dutta, Soumya; Feige, Kathrin; Rink, Karsten; Zeckzer, Dirk
    Raising public awareness about air quality is crucial for promoting individual and collective actions to mitigate the harmful effects of air pollution and achieve a healthier and more sustainable environment. This article presents an application that uses Augmented Reality (AR) and Situated Visualization (SV) to increase public awareness of air quality-related issues. The application, created according to the Human-Centered Design (HCD) methodology, overlays a visual representation of realtime air quality data onto the user's immediate environment, taking advantage of SV's contextualization capabilities. However, this kind of AR application faces some challenges, namely the AR egocentric viewpoint limitation of users when using SV. The application incorporates two solutions to mitigate this problem: multi-dynamic camera feeds (using the front and rear cameras of the mobile phone to extend the user's field of view) and side-by-side dynamic AR and Virtual Reality (VR) camera feeds (a transitional interface with an AR camera and a 3D virtual/digital representation of the area where the user is). Finally, the article evaluates the usability of the application and proposes solutions to mitigate egocentric viewpoint limitations. A study was conducted with seven participants with no prior experience in air quality visualization or AR to complete a task that involved pollution information retrieval using only the AR camera, as well as the side-by-side dynamic AR and VR camera feeds. The results showed that by using the solutions, the task completion time decreased by 42%. Additionally, the application received positive feedback regarding ease of understanding, complexity, and involvement, suggesting that it can be truly helpful.