Emília Duarte

Instituto de Artes Visuais, Design e Marketing · UNIDCOM & IADE-UX.LAB

Human-robot interactions (HRI) can be made much more immersive by using sounds. Regarding this, a study was carried out to explore different types of sounds that may be more suitable for HRI. Participants were presented with a video in which a social robot navigates in a context and expresses six basic emotions in specific situations. The participa...

This study investigates the impact of sound and emotional expressions in a social robot on empathy development in human-robot interactions. The experiment included 83 participants randomly assigned to four experimental groups: NSNE (No Sound, No Emotions), SE (Sound, Emotions), NSE (No Sound, Emotions), and NES (No Emotions, Sound). The participant...

This pilot study aimed to evaluate the impact of conventional ISO type safety signs on enhancing hazard-risk behaviours and prompting behavioural compliance, in a non-conspicuous hazardous situation (i.e., a Conveyor belt hazard, void of any visual and/or auditory cues). Using a work-related (i.e., a stereotypical, yet realistic factory setting) vi...

Mobility in big cities has been pointed as the cause of growing unsatisfaction of citizens with a direct effect in their quality of life and overall sustainability of these places. Recently, due to new technological developments, cities are becoming “smart” and smart mobility has growing importance. However, little is known about smart mobility eff...

Hospitals are considered chaotic and stressful places. In particular, the presence of unpleasant stimuli in the environment (e.g., blinding lights, electronic noises, chemical smells) is considered one of the greatest causes of stress. All these aggressive stimuli, belonging to different sensory modalities, are processed simultaneously by the centr...

In the field of healthcare design, a great revolution is taking place. The use of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, and in particular the great success of smartwatches, fit bands, and specific wearable medical devices allowed people to self-monitor their health parameters. At the same time, physicians were allowed to track, assist, make diagno...

An increasing adoption of Immersive Virtual Reality (iVR) based solutions can be observed in higher education and in design education particularly, namely in the teaching and learning the design fundamentals, usually referred to as Basic Design (BD). Research on this subject focuses mainly the overall potential of this technology for developing new...

This study aimed to assess perceptions on the graphical informational materials designed to help in the fight against COVID-19 in Portugal and Brazil. We assessed the perceptions using an online survey incorporating the AttrakDiff2TM questionnaire. The results show that the perception of risk with relation to the COVID-19 pandemic is high among the...

This paper presents and discusses the results of a future forecast study involving Higher Education educators from the field of industrial design and neighbouring. Participants were asked to imagine teaching and learning situations twenty years ahead, in a future where Virtual Reality (VR) technology and the design studio are harmoniously integrate...

Learning Outcomes (LOs) are increasingly emphasized in Higher Education (HE) systems all over the world as supporting globalization when considered at the macro scale of influence. Facing the urgent revision towards education automation, this study addresses the LOs micro-scale of influence. It can add to the setting of a solid background for innov...

Amidst the COVID-19, the use of technology in the learning environment was no longer a matter of choice. Forced by circumstance, educators had to adapt in order to see the academic year through. While for some, already used to an online modality, it was business as always, for others was the start of a journey through unfamiliar territory. This stu...

Amidst the COVID-19, the use of technology in the learning environment was no longer a matter of choice. Forced by circumstance, educators had to adapt in order to see the academic year through. While for some, already used to an online modality, it was business as always, for others was the start of a journey through unfamiliar territory. This stu...

Blind individuals' wayfinding performance in complex urban environments is a complex phenomenon. This study investigates the wayfinding strategies of congenitally blind individuals in an urban context. The aim of the study was to assess the extent to which the environmental auditory cues are of primary importance for their wayfinding strategies. Th...

Interactive walls offer promise for behaviour change due to their ability to engage and maintain the attention and interest of users, in a fun and appealing way. This paper presents an interactive wall designed to promote compliance with World Health Organization’s hand hygiene guidelines and discusses its acceptance and user experience by healthca...

Robots are found to be good, capable and trustworthy companions in various areas, including high-risk situations or emergencies, but some limitations regarding their acceptance have been reported. Amongst other aspects of the Human-Robot Interaction, trust in the robot has been considered as a main indicator of acceptance. Thus, to investigate the...

Educação em Design, em Portugal; Design Básico; Realidade Virtual Enquadrado numa investigação que incide no mapeamento do Design Básico no Ensino Superior português, este estudo procura a sua presença e linha evolutiva, num instituto pioneiro do ensino do Design em Portugal, o IADE. Apesar das diferentes expressões e formatos que adquire ao longo...

In recent years, the foundations of design teaching and learning have been subject to revision and reinvention, particularly concerning the way the discipline is introduced to students. Against that backdrop, the present study focuses on Portuguese Design study programs to identify the presence of Basic Design tradition, specifically concerning the...

The work presented in this paper is a part of a doctoral research in Design, which aims to promote sustainable behaviours in everyday life through the use of fashionable wearables. The comprehension of what kind of behaviours can be considered as being sustainable is needed for backing the design solutions including the wearables. Thus, a literatur...

Robots should have characteristics that make the interaction effective and fluent for a successful Human-Robot Interaction (HRI). Since the emotions play a fundamental role in the human interaction process, many robots are introduced facial expressions, speech, body movements, among others to deepen the HRI. This chapter presents the exploration, d...

Hand hygiene has been recognized over the past two decades as the most effective method of preventing healthcare-associated infections, which are responsible for increased morbidity, mortality and costs of healthcare per year, worldwide. Although hand hygiene practice is considered critical, compliance with the “Five Moments for Hand Hygiene”, prop...

Several areas, such as evidence-based healthcare design, salutogenic architecture and environmental psychology, agree with the importance of the built environment (e.g., space, equipment and environmental variables) in the patients’ healing process. Poor quality sensorial stimuli appears to increase psychological distress and, indirectly, be linked...

This paper proposes an investigation onto the physiological and/or cognitive effects that VR, as a technology-enabled learning platform, may have on industrial design students when used as a medium for content creation, with the goal of identifying optimal experience thresholds. This will be accomplished through the adoption of a mixed methodology,...

While social robots participation increases in everyday human life, their presence in diverse contexts and situations is expected. At the same point, users tend to become more demanding regarding their roles, abilities, behaviour and appearance. Thus, designers and developers are confronted with the need to design more sophisticated robots that can...

Several studies demonstrate the effect of sensorial stimuli on health and wellbeing. Paradoxically, healthcare facilities are often a source of aggressive sensations for their users. The conventional design approaches address this problem by trying to eliminate/minimize negative factors, working mostly to guarantee calm and privacy. A synaesthetic...

Several studies demonstrate the effect of sensorial stimuli on health and wellbeing. Paradoxically, healthcare facilities are often a source of aggressive sensations for their users. The conventional design approaches address this problem by trying to eliminate/minimize negative factors, working mostly to guarantee calm and privacy. A synaesthetic...

This pilot study aimed to evaluate the viability of using a Virtual Environment (VE) prototype for conducting research regarding technology-based safety signs, i.e., Augmented Reality (AR) warnings. Using a complex work-related context (comprised of two hazardous situations with distinct salience levels) and a sample of 12 workers (27–60 years), th...

LEARNING BASIC DESIGN WITH VIRTUAL REALITY: A METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH A. Neves ¹, L. Niemeyer ¹, E. Duarte ¹, D. Dias ², H. Ayanoglu ¹, L. Teixeira ¹, M. Saraiva ¹, F. Martins ¹ 1UNIDCOM/IADE (PORTUGAL) 2Universidade Europeia (PORTUGAL) Basic Design remains an unexplored field regarding the input of the new technologies (e.g., Virtual Reality - V...

A successful Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) depends on the empathy that the robot has the capability of instantiating on the user, namely through the expression of emotions. In this pilot study, we examined the recognition of emotions being expressed by a service robot in a virtual environment (VE), by university students. The VE was a corridor, neu...

TITLE: Assessment of hazard perception from packages shapes: a comparison of visualization methos ABSTRACT User safety could be increased by package designs that promote an adequate hazard perception. Different methodologies are available to conduct studies about the influence of package variables on users’ perceptions. This paper presents a compar...

The aim of this paper is to present a reflection about the potentiality and interest of Virtual Reality (VR) for innovation in the Basic Design education. Basic Design is about affording meaningful learning experiences to the newly arrived design students while introducing the design fundamentals. Without approaching real design problems, but abstr...

Most medicine fact sheets are printed in small type and have information hierarchy and layout issues. In Europe, these sheets are individual bulletins that are put inside the packages. Users frequently report difficulties in reading the material, finding the required information and understanding the technical jargon, and/or have lost the sheet. Th...

Color is often used to communicate the level of hazard. The present study sought to determine the effect of packages’ color on hazard-related perceptions in a Virtual Environment. There were two conditions: achromatic (grayscale) and chromatic (red, yellow, blue, green). A sample of 40 design students rated their hazard-related perceptions (e.g., l...

Recent studies have highlighted Virtual Environments (VEs) as feasible tools for conducting safety sign research. Conversely, guidelines on how to conduct such studies with workplace safety signs and older workers, is scarce. The nature of this study is justified by the fact that, as workers grow older, their ability to comply with such signs is ad...

To develop products for young children is a real challenge because they have very diverse physical and psychological characteristics, which are in constant change. Therefore, designing a safety warning adequate to their comprehension abilities, which is able to have a truly impact on their behavior, becomes a great challenge. Accidents with childre...

Household Packages, Hazard Perception, Virtual Reality User safety could be increased by package designs that promote an adequate hazard perception. Different methodologies are available to conduct studies about the influence of package variables on users' perceptions. This paper presents a comparative study of two visualization methods (2D vs 3D)...

This exploratory research compared participants’ (N=60) perception of several aspects and preference of two animation-based warnings which differ on the finale (dramatic versus humoristic). The warnings’ purpose is to alert to the hazard of falling onto the train tracks when standing near the edge of the platform, at a subway station. The main diff...

Over the years, different types of Virtual Environment (VE) systems have become commercially available, thereby giving rise to several types of human performance studies. However, in the field of safety communications, VE usability knowledge regarding older populations is scarce. In this context, this paper discusses the main findings gathered rega...

The Health Care-Associated Infections (HCAIs) are a serious health problem, having contributed to high morbidity and mortality rates, as well as an increase in associated costs. Together with a set of good practices, hand hygiene is considered one of the key measures of preventing and controlling the spread of HCAIs. However, compliance with hand h...

Many household products have “hidden hazards”. Also, because of package similarity, people may have difficulty distinguishing chemicals from consumable goods. The incorrect identification of a hazard can result in injuries. Many efforts have been done to improve package warnings, but little is known about the extent that the package’s shape can be...

Emotions in the context of UX are generally evaluated in regard to product appearance and sensorial experience. The use of virtual reality can be a way to study UX in consumer products. We want to evaluate if we could increase emotional responses using a virtual reality immersive system. For that purpose, we used the GAPED picture database and comp...

Gamification is an approach which seeks to positively impact diverse wellness and health-related contexts, not only because it can get people more engaged and make them more responsible for their health-related decisions, but also because it can enhance the performance of healthcare workers. It, therefore, affects both the costs of personal wellnes...

Emergencies (e.g., fire egress) into complex buildings are stressful situations which can provoke unexpected, undesired and sometimes unsafety behaviors in the users. Thus, the main objective of this pilot study was to investigate the relative influence of new technology-based exit signs, when compared to the conventional static ISO-type counterpar...

This study examined the relative influence of environmental variables (corridor width and brightness) and signage (directional and exit signs), when presented in competition, on participants' route-choices in two situational variables (everyday vs. emergency), during indoor wayfinding in virtual environments. A virtual reality-based methodology was...

This research carried out comprehension testing on a set of symbol-based safety signs using three diverse groups of participants that included adult workers, college students and persons afflicted with cerebral palsy. Few studies have examined “differently abled” populations with respect to safety signs. Open comprehension testing of a set of 17 sy...

Gamification is an approach which seeks to positively impact diverse wellness and health-related contexts, not only because it can get people more engaged and make them more responsible for their health-related decisions, but also because it can enhance the performance of healthcare workers. It, therefore, affects both the costs of personal wellnes...

This study used an immersive virtual environment (IVE) to examine how dynamic features in signage affect behavioral compliance during a work-related task and an emergency egress. Ninety participants performed a work-related task followed by an emergency egress. Compliance with uncued and cued safety signs was assessed prior to an explosion/fire inv...

Many studies have shown the ability of interior design elements (e.g., artwork, nature, home elements) to elicit positive emotions on hospital users thereby enhancing the healing process. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether such elements can affect users’ emotional responses during a VR experience. In this study we explored the influence of inter...

This paper aims to explore the strength of environmental variables (i.e., corridor width and brightness), in directing people to indoor locations during emergency situations. The existence of contradictory information was manipulated by inserting posted signs pointing to the opposite direction to the one suggested by the environmental variables. A...

Many features of a Virtual Reality system can influence the immersion and the sense of presence. Navigation is one of those features, since proprioceptive and vestibular cues can have a positive impact on immersion and sense of presence. This is especially important for studies about human behavior, where behavioral responses should be as close as...

Recent researches suggest that Virtual Reality (VR) is amongst the best tools for examining behavioral compliance with warnings, therefore overcoming some ethical and methodological constrains that have been limiting this type of research. Yet, such evaluation using VR requires both usable and engaging virtual environments (VEs). This study examine...

Informing users about the correct hazard level associated with products can be one of the most important measures to help promote user safety while they handle hazardous household chemicals. The aim of this paper is to present pilot study’s results about the effectiveness of using a VR-based methodology to examine the influence of a container’s fea...

Over the last decades, Virtual Reality (VR) technology has emerged as a promising tool for numerous human performance assessments. Together with the expansion of such systems, several Virtual Environment (VE) usability criteria have been developed to ensure their optimal production and efficiency. However, the current status of such measures for wa...

Informing users about the correct hazard level associated with products can be one of the most important measures to help promote user safety while they handle hazardous household chemicals. The aim of this paper is to present pilot study’s results about the effectiveness of using a VR-based methodology to examine the influence of a container’s fea...

Many studies have shown the ability of interior design elements (e.g., artwork, nature, home elements) to elicit positive emotions on hospital users thereby enhancing the healing process. Nevertheless, it is not clear whether such elements can affect users’ emotional responses during a VR experience. In this study we explored the influence of inter...

This paper aims to explore the strength of environmental variables (i.e., corridor width and brightness), in directing people to indoor locations during emergency situations. The existence of contradictory information was manipulated by inserting posted signs pointing to the opposite direction to the one suggested by the environmental variables. A...

Many features of a Virtual Reality system can influence the immersion and the sense of presence. Navigation is one of those features, since proprioceptive and vestibular cues can have a positive impact on immersion and sense of presence. This is especially important for studies about human behavior, where behavioral responses should be as close as...

Recent researches suggest that Virtual Reality (VR) is amongst the best tools for examining behavioral compliance with warnings, therefore overcoming some ethical and methodological constrains that have been limiting this type of research. Yet, such evaluation using VR requires both usable and engaging virtual environments (VEs). This study examine...

Over the last decades, Virtual Reality (VR) technology has emerged as a promising tool for numerous human performance assessments. Together with the expansion of such systems, several Virtual Environment (VE) usability criteria have been developed to ensure their optimal production and efficiency. However, the current status of such measures for wa...

Emotions in the context of UX are generally evaluated in regard to product appearance and sensorial experience. The use of virtual reality can be a way to study UX in consumer products. We want to evaluate if we could increase emotional responses using a virtual reality immersive system. For that purpose, we used the GAPED picture database and comp...

The aim of this article is to discuss how user experience (UX) evaluation can benefit from the use of virtual reality (VR). UX is usually evaluated in laboratory settings. However, considering that UX occurs as a consequence of the interaction between the product, the user, and the context of use, the assessment of UX can benefit from a more ecolog...

The effect of a personalized technology-based warning on compliance was assessed using an immersive virtual environment (IVE). Sixty university students performed an end-of-day routine security check in the IVE. Participants were asked to search for and activate safety-related devices, which involved entering several rooms. Just prior to abandoning...

Warnings are intended to reduce accidents caused by hazards. Behavioral compliance is the most important measure of warning effectiveness. However, in result of diverse circumstances (e.g., distraction, misuse, negligence), conflicting or ambiguous safety messages can be perceived. Since these are recurrent and can result in wrong behaviors encompa...

There is an increasing interest in multimodal technology-based warnings, namely those conveying speech-warning statements. This type of warning may be tailored to the situation as well as to the target user’s characteristics. However, more information is needed on how to design these warnings in a way that ensures intelligibility, promotes complian...

Previous studies suggest significant differences between navigating virtual environments in a life-like walking manner (i.e., using treadmills or walk-in-place techniques) and virtual navigation (i.e., flying while really standing). The latter option, which usually involves hand-centric devices (e.g., joysticks), is the most common in Virtual Reali...

Previous studies suggest significant differences between navigating virtual environments in a life-like walking manner (i.e., using treadmills or walk-in-place techniques) and virtual navigation (i.e., flying while really standing). The latter option, which usually involves hand-centric devices (e. g., joysticks), is the most common in Virtual Real...

There is an increasing interest in multimodal technology-based warnings, namely those conveying speech-warning statements. This type of warning may be tailored to the situation as well as to the target user's characteristics. However, more information is needed on how to design these warnings in a way that ensures intelligibility, promotes complian...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate human interaction with Virtual Environments (VEs) through the use of matrices of space exploration. The matrices are the outputs of the participants’ exploration of a VE in five experimental conditions, defined by two levels of visual pollution (i.e., more visually polluted and less visually polluted) conta...

Since it is not always possible to design-out hazards from some packages, injuries are, unfortunately, a common outcome while handling packages with hazardous contents (e.g., chemicals) at home. This can be due to inadequate assumptions about the packages’ content hazard level. Thus, to increase safety, it is fundamental that users perceive quickly...