Lab Resources

Getting Access

The lab is located in 200A 02.101. You will need to get your student card enabled to access the room. You can do so by downloading and filling the form. The applicant is Prof. Adalberto Simeone. Under access you should write that you need access to the VR equipment in the room for your Master's thesis for the duration of your project (typically until the end of the following academic year). The current responsible person to indicate on page two is Miss Xuesong Zhang. You can send the signed and filled form directly via e-mail to Ms Karine Op de Beeck. Be sure to include Prof. Simeone in CC.

Use of the Lab

There is a limited number of devices available in the lab. In order to avoid situations where a device you might need for your project is currently busy, a reservation system has been set up. After registering, you can access it through the Account menu or directly through this link. You will see a list of all the devices and their individual schedules according to the date range you select. To make a booking select all the devices you need and follow the steps. You will receive an email and you will be able to cancel or renew each booking. Each device has a label where the same id on the booking is reported. You can also view an overview of all the devices being used in the lab on a specific day by looking at the schedule, also accessible via the Account menu.

The intention is to resolve potential conflicts and to keep a log of who is using what. By using the system, you help your colleagues in understanding whether or not the equipment they might need is in use. Some devices are not bookable unless your account is authorised.

When you book a device, you will receive a link to your booking via email. There, you will be able to update the location where the device has been left. In general, bring it back to where you originally found it and make sure the information in the system is up to date.

If there are any issues with the system, or if you need to have a software that you need installed, please send an email to aria at cs.kuleuven.be.

Lab etiquette

Please do not eat in the lab and remember to recycle all recycleable waste in the specific bins just outside.

Writing your thesis

You can find general advice and some FAQs on how to write your thesis in this page (requires login).

Important deadlines

After starting your project, bi-weekly sessions are organised where you can discuss your progress on your project and receive feedback. Participation to these sessions is voluntary but strongly encouraged. In addition to these feedback moments, please consider the following calendar which depicts important moments during your Master's thesis work.

End of November: Related Work Chapter

• Write the related work chapter on the Overleaf project.
• Let your mentor know when you are finished so they can read it and give feedback.

Middle of December: First Presentation

You should prepare a presentation (10 minutes maximum, plus 5 for questions) where you detail your plan for the following semester. In the presentation, you should:

• Present an overview of the problem, why is it relevant, and what is the state of the art.
• Discuss the research question(s) and your chosen approach.
• If you plan to run a user study, describe the procedure and the data you will collect. Use any of the publications available here as an example.
• Discuss the technology you are going to use.
• Bonus points if you can provide an overview of how you will allocate your time and which skills you might need to develop (e.g., 3D/VR development, statistics, etc.).

End of February: Introduction and User Study chapters

• Write the introduction and user study chapters on the Overleaf project.
• Let your mentor know when you are finished so they can read it and give feedback.

Beginning of March: Second Presentation

You should prepare a presentation (10 minutes maximum, plus 5 for questions).

• Present a prototype implementation of your system, showing how your solution can work in principle.
• Present the study design and evaluation procedures (what will participants do, which data will you collect, etc.)

Between March and April: Pilot Study and Contribution Chapter

• Before starting the user study, demonstrate a pilot study version of the prototype to your mentor. You need to demonstrate that your prototype is capable of running through all intended conditions of the study or evaluation.
• Write the contribution chapter, and alert the mentor when you are finished so they can give feedback on it.

End of May: Finish the Text

By this point you should have run your user study and analysed the results. We recommend finishing the first draft of the thesis two weeks before the submission deadline, to ensure the mentor (and professor) have time to read and that you can incorporate their feedback into a second iteration of the text.

• Write results, discussion, and conclusion chapters.
• Finalise the other thesis chapters.

Final Presentation

Trial run for the defense

Useful Resources

You can book an appointment with Prof. Adalberto Simeone.

Books

The following books are available in the university library, as well as in the Lab's library.

• The VR book by Jason Jerald is a generalist book that provides an overview of the field.
• 3D User Interfaces Theory and Practice by LaViola et al. provides an overview of the main interaction techniques and challenges when designing 3D User Interfaces.
• Modern Statistical Methods for HCI by Judy Robertson and Maurits Kaptein, provides an overview of common statistical methods for running HCI user studies.

Learning Resources

• Unity Learn provides a series of tutorials and other learning resources for Unity, created by the developers.
• Brackeys is a YouTube channel which regularly posts Unity tutorial. The focus is more on gamedev but it can be useful to learn the basics of the Unity engine.
• Unreal Engine on YouTube has various tutorial videos on how to use the engine.

Software links

• RStudio is a software to perform statistical analysis. You also need the R binaries (for Windows or your preferred OS).
• USharp is an experimental and unofficial plugin for Unreal Engine 4 that allows you to write C# code instead of C++. Currently, support is only available for UE 4.23.
• UnrealCLR is another similar plugin which provides support up to UE 4.25.1.
• MRTK is Microsoft's Mixed Reality Toolkit which provides useful components for developing MR apps for both Unity and Unreal.

Conferences

• IEEE VR, the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality.
• CHI, the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors.
• UIST, the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.
• SUI, the ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction.
• DIS, the ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.
• CHI Play, the ACM Conference on Player-Computer Interaction.
• ISMAR, the IEEE Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality.