I investigate how immersive and interactive systems can be designed and evaluated to improve experience quality, task performance and trust.
I study how virtual and augmented reality systems can be built so they actually work well for people, not just technically, but in terms of how natural, comfortable and useful they feel. I measure user experience using questionnaires, eye tracking and physiological sensors, and apply these findings to improve VR/AR for training, healthcare and everyday use.
Most XR research either studies interaction in the lab or measures physiology separately. I do both together, and I take XR outside the lab, into hospitals, public spaces and safety-critical training environments. This combination lets me answer questions neither approach alone can address: not just “does this feel good?” but “what do bodies and brains reveal about quality that users cannot consciously articulate?”
Safety-critical training · public-space MR · digital twins · health communication · intelligent agents
Each line has its own methods, venues and funding base, but they share one measurement philosophy.
Why it matters: spatial interaction quality directly influences usability, social acceptance and deployment readiness. A gesture that works in an empty lab may be unusable on a train platform.
Why it matters: QoE data links technical system behaviour to perceived quality, trust and adoption. It is the bridge between an engineering parameter and a product decision, and the basis of the ITU-T recommendations I co-develop.
Why it matters: physiological and behavioural signals complement self-reports for robust user-state assessment. My EEG work showed that brains detect audio quality degradations that listeners consciously rate as acceptable, a finding with direct implications for invisible quality thresholds in streaming systems.
Why it matters: human-centered XR can improve engagement and measurable outcomes in education and health communication, but only if evaluated in the clinical and educational contexts where it will actually run.
Why it matters: embodied agents and synthetic media content are entering training and health communication faster than methods to evaluate trust and acceptance in them. Calibrated trust, neither blind reliance nor blanket rejection, is the target.
Material from this work that other groups can download, reuse and cite.
Dataset · 2022 · OSF
Simulated videotelephony clips for research on quality perception: recorded material for experiments in which participants rate audiovisual quality under controlled degradations.
Spang, R. P., Voigt-Antons, J.-N. & Möller, S. (2022). The Storytime Dataset: Simulated Videotelephony Clips for Quality Perception Research. Paper presented at the 14th International Conference on Quality of Multimedia Experience (QoMEX 2022), Lippstadt, Germany. doi:10.1109/QoMEX55416.2022.9900888 Details
Dataset · 2022 · OSF
Stop and trip annotated GPS and accelerometer data from everyday life: labelled mobility traces for developing and benchmarking methods that tell movement apart from standing still.
Spang, R. P., Pieper, K., Oesterle, B., Brauer, M., Haeger, C., Mümken, S., Gellert, P. & Voigt-Antons, J.-N. (2022). The STAGA-Dataset: Stop and Trip Annotated GPS and Accelerometer Data of Everyday Life. Paper presented at the Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G 2022). Firenze, Italy. doi:10.5194/isprs-archives-XLVIII-4-W1-2022-443-2022 Details
I am open to joint proposals, clinical and industrial studies, and invited talks.