
Ilona HeldalHøgskulen på Vestlandet | HVL · Faculty of Science and Engineering
Ilona Heldal
Professor (Chair) of Informatics Ph.D.
About
115
Publications
26,415
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1,182
Citations
Introduction
My research area is within Applied Informatics, Interactive Systems, and conduct projects focusing on design, use, usability, user experience evaluation of technologies (virtual reality, serious games, simulations). My current projects are focusing on supporting technology introduction, adoption, acceptance in organizations for training and learning.
Additional affiliations
January 2016 - present
Western Norway University of Applied Sciences
Position
- Professor (Full)
Description
- Interactive Systems: HCI, IS issues for design, development and use of Mixed Reality (VR, AR, etc), Serious Games, and Gamification.
January 2015 - December 2018
University West
Position
- Professor
Description
- Work Integrated Learning. Using new technology, digitalization for learning.
Publications
Publications (115)
Hands-on skills training is a constant requirement in a multitude of practical work settings and virtual reality (VR) is often found to be a valuable training opportunity to safely prepare students for their future work environments. One of the main benefits of utilizing VR-based training is providing high grades of presence and involvement. Althou...
Eye-tracking technologies offer a valuable means of collecting data on gaze movements, which can be utilized to assess functional vision problems. However, analyzing gaze data and presenting trustworthy interpretations is a challenge today. The analysis depends on the eye-tracking technologies, available software for vision screening, gaze metrics,...
Background:
Despite a surge in health information and communication technology (ICT), there is little evidence of lowered cost or increased quality of care. ICT may support patients, health care providers, and other stakeholders through complex rehabilitation trajectories by offering digital platforms for collaboration, shared decision-making, and...
Oculomotor dysfunctions (OMDs) are problems relating to coordination and accuracy of eye movements for processing visual information. Eye-tracking (ET) technologies show great promise in the identification of OMDs. However, current computer technologies for vision screening are specialized devices with limited screen size and the inability to measu...
Developing accessible tools that support the identification of functional vision problems with reliable measurements of eye movements is a common interest. To develop such an open source tool considering eye tracker data needs automatic processing of eye data, handling time stamps, dynamic data generation, and parameter adaptation. This paper illus...
Oculomotor Dysfunctions (OMDs) are problems with eye-musculature relating to coordination and accuracy of eye movements. Eye-tracking (ET) technologies show great promise in the identification of OMDs. Current computer technologies for vision screening are specialized devices or laptop based technologies with limited by screen size and the inabilit...
BACKGROUND
Despite a surge in health information and communication technology (ICT), there is little evidence of lowered cost or increased quality of care. ICT may support stakeholders through a rehabilitation trajectory by offering safe storage of data and information exchange, still leaving the complex intersection between producers and users of...
Functional Vision Problems (FVPs) are problems related to eye musculature and/or eye coordination rather than visual acuity. Such problems are rarely diagonsed through standard vision control, and can get worse with age if not properly treated. However, a thorough vision screening of many requires enormous resources from society, which is not possi...
Eye-tracking technologies (ETs) and serious games (SGs) have emerged as new methods promising better support for vision screening and training. Previous research has shown the practicality of eye-tracking technology for vision screening in health care, but there remains a need for studies showing that the effective utilization of SGs and ETs are be...
Serious games in immersive virtual reality (VR) environments promise enhanced experiences and engagement, supporting training and learning. While realistically replicating the visuals of real environments can be both difficult and time-consuming, there are many potential advantages from doing so. In real work placements, students enter
facilities w...
Escaping from a fire to a safe place can take
longer and be more difficult for people belonging to at-risk
groups. While there are several models addressing uncertainty
during evacuation, the effect of these on the elderly and people
with disabilities, especially those people who are living alone is
seldom exemplified. Considering a common type of...
The emergence of immersive virtual reality (IVR) technologies has raised interest in 13 the use of fire and rescue services (FRS) as a supplement to the established practice-based hot 14 fire-live simulation (HF-LS) training. This is due to features such as time efficiency, portable 15 technologies, and training in scenarios not possible in HF-LS....
While Virtual Reality (VR) has gained significant attention in different domains of health care and promises benefits for managing vision disturbances, no bibliometric analysis focuses on its use in vision therapy. This study aims to analyze and visualize the scientific literature indexed in the Web of Science databases by visualizing bibliometric...
The potential contribution of immersive technology to the improvement of training and training of the Brazilian Fire Department has been recognized and accepted. The methodological approach consisted of quantitative research composed of a literature review and case studies. The theory was based on efforts to use virtual reality (VR) equipment. Info...
Practice-based training in education is important, expensive, and resource-demanding. Digital games can provide complementary training opportunities for practicing procedural skills and increase the value of the limited laboratory training time in biomedical laboratory science (BLS) education. This paper presents how a serious game can be integrate...
An incident commander (IC) is expected to take command in any incident to mitigate consequences for humans, property, and the environment. To prepare for this, practice-based training in realistic simulated situations is necessary. Usually this is conducted in live simulation (LS) at dedicated (physical) training grounds or in virtual simulation (V...
The rapid growth of eye-tracking technologies
promises help for researchers to complement vision screening.
However, there is little or no research on bibliometrics and
visualization on the use of eye-tracking technologies for this
purpose. This study aims to analyze and visualize the published
papers from the Web of Science databases. 499 referenc...
Serious games in immersive virtual reality (VR) environments promise enhanced experiences and engagement, supporting training and learning. While realistically replicating the visuals of real environments can be both difficult and time-consuming, there are many potential advantages from doing so. In real work placements, students enter facilities w...
Many children have undetected vision problems or insufficient visual information processing that may be a factor in lower academic outcomes. The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of the importance of vision screening for school-aged children, and to investigate the possibilities of how eye-tracking (ET) technologies can s...
3D technology has become one of the basic elements of computer-aided workflows, and due to its attention-grabbing effect, it is also used in education, whether it is illustrative methods used in teaching or computer-aided design. In this paper we analyzed the effectiveness of the 2D and 3D environment while performing a problem-solving task using e...
A poster titled "Eye-tracking technologies for vision screening & therapy".
We presented this poster at PhD seminar, Voss and it was organized by the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences.
13-09-2021 - 15-09-2021
Introduction:
Vision problems affect academic performance, social and mental health. Most traditional vision screening methods rely on human expert assessments based on a set of vision tests. As technology advances, new instruments and computerised tools are available for complementing vision screening. The scoping review based on this protocol ai...
Rehabilitation is a complex process based on interaction and communication. The patient's wants and needs, health records, relationship status, and living conditions impact priority setting, aims, and means in the rehabilitation process. Designing a well-fitting rehabilitation trajectory implies sharing of information, coordination, and collective...
Due to the COVID-19 restrictions, on-site Incident Commander (IC) practical training and examinations in Sweden were canceled as of March 2020. The graduation of one IC class was, however, conducted through Remote Virtual Simulation (RVS), the first such examination to our current knowledge. This paper presents the necessary enablers for setting up...
Emergency response and management training is challenged by quick changes in society today. Education and training need to develop and adjust at the same pace to make sure the emergency professionals are well prepared. New types of complex incidents and unexpected events can be difficult and expensive to train in realistic live simulations. Virtual...
Several children struggle with vision difficulties caused by problematic coordination between their left and right eye muscles, i.e., oculomotor dysfunction (OMD). Many OMDs can be improved by training the eyes via physical exercises defined and supervised by vision experts. The aim of this paper is to investigate the feasibility of utilizing Serio...
ORCID Tobba Therkildsen Sudmann https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7482-9984 ORCID Eva Haukeland Fredriksen https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5609-8308 ORCID Ingebjørg Traeland Børsheim https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4706-7790 ORCID Ilona Heldal https://orcid.org/ Abstract: In today's society, all citizens who need digital information to manage their everyday life...
The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of children's vision care from the identification to treatment, with, in particular, a better understanding of the use of eye tracking (ET) technologies. While there are indications that these technologies can support vision care, a comprehensive understanding of the possibilities is...
Mixed reality and serious games are often advocated
as promising technologies in supporting training and increasing
the skills necessary to deal with new, complex, and often
unexpected situations. This paper explores the feasibility of an
Augmented Reality- (AR) based cyber-physical solution to
complement live training for the treatment of serious...
Due to the development of digital tools in the information society, all arenas of society are constantly changing, including the process and methods of education and learning. Both students and educators familiar with the use of digital devices have a significant presence of digital technology in their daily lives, not only in connection with teach...
Eye movement tracking systems offer the opportunity to observe and study a complex cognitive process such as programming. As a consequence of the growing number of program systems, software developers need to be able to use more and more programming technologies effectively. The paper analyses one of the possibilities of the C# programming language...
Experiencing a high presence in training is essential for emergency response and management preparedness. Incident Commanders (ICs) education and training needs to ensure they have enough experience to handle a wide range of usual as well as unusual and new types of incidents. Computer and virtual simulation-based training (CST) offers several bene...
Simulations, serious games, and virtual reality (SSG) applications represent promising support for achieving practical proficiency, but it is difficult to know how to introduce them into a new environment. This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of introducing new SSGs to a non-computer related educational environment—biomedical lab...
Visually demanding tasks such as reading, writing or playing, depend on our ability to maintain accurate and steady eye movements and coordinate the muscles controlling our eyes. Problems in our eye-muscle coordination, oculomotor dysfunctions (OMD) are common visual disturbances and can be trained to be better. The aim of this paper is to illustra...
Recognition of facial expressions is one of the basic skills used to understand the feelings and intentions of others and it represents a crucial ability for establishing interpersonal connections in life. Previous studies have shown that the ability to recognize emotions, the speed and accuracy, with which individuals process emotions, appears to...
The continuous visual tracking of activity performed in perception and action activities requires continuous eye motion. The visual computer monitoring, recording and evaluation of human motion provides many opportunities in the development of human-computer interfaces. In most activities performed by humans, eye-hand coordination plays a significa...
Through the analysis of eye motion, human cognitive activity, specific cognitive processes may be indirectly monitored. To track eye motion, several video-based devices have been developed, such as Gazepoint GP3. In the demo, the gaze path recording is demonstrated using GP3 device, then the evaluation of gaze fixations using OAGAMA software are ev...
Eye-tracking is a widely used method to examine the hidden cognitive processes. In this paper a program source code debugging process is examined by eye-tracking method. A computer based analysis was elaborated to test the debug process and record the main parameters of eye movement. During the test, two typical groups were established, in case of...
Recently, researches based on eye-tracking have more often appeared on the field of cognitive studies, education support systems and virtual reality. Eye-tracking based analysis may be useful in IT, particular in algorithm thinking, program code debugging. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the conditions of Gazepoint GP3 device and OGAMA us...
Training collaboration and work in various contexts in the health sector may be supported by different technologies. Based on a practical study involving Swedish emergency medical services personnel and different simulator technologies, this paper exemplifies the benefit of using processes, narratives, simulations and serious games to design contex...
Life is changing after recognizing a pregnancy. Then the future parents, who are often healthy individuals, need to change their lifestyles, meet different healthcare institutions, follow new rules, and reschedule their everyday activities. This paper illustrates the design and development of a novel mobile application supporting future parents in...
Training collaboration and work in various Emergency Management (EM) can be supported by different technologies, in particular simulations and serious games (SSGs). This paper is based on an investigation of why the promising SSG technologies can be difficult to use, even a long time after their procurement by the user organizations. The focus is o...
Due to rapid and substantial changes in the health sector, collaboration and supporting technologies get more into focus. Changes in education and training are also required. Simulations and serious games (SSG) are often advocated as promising technologies supporting training of many and in the same manner, or increasing the skills necessary to dea...
One of the main criteria of effectively managing emergency and crisis situations is good preparedness. Simulation and serious games (SSG) are often advocated as promising technologies supporting training and increasing the skills necessary to deal with new, complex and often unexpected situations. This paper is based on an investigation of why a se...
Spatial hashing is an efficient technique to speed up proximity queries on moving objects in the space domain, suitable for computer entertainment applications and simulations. This paper presents an efficient three-step algorithm for building a 1D hash table for spatial hashing needed to perform fast queries on objects for location and proximity d...
A trend over the past years is that simulation systems for training are being connected in simulation
networks, allowing the interaction of teams spread in distributed sites. By combining interconnected simulation systems
the simulation complexity increases and may affect time-critical simulation tasks in a negative way. As a consequence,
the train...
This study presents the Thesis Steering Model (TSM), an instrument supporting systematic communication and collaboration between the different stakeholders involved in industrial doctoral projects. The results describe TSM and illustrate its introduction for seven doctoral projects within a postgraduate school in applied informatics. The experience...
Traditional Artificial Cognitive Systems (for example, intelligent robots)
share a number of limitations. First, they are usually made up only of machine
components; humans are only playing the role of user or supervisor. And yet,
there are tasks in which the current state of the art of AI has much worse
performance or is more expensive than humans...
Training actors from public safety agencies (PSA), e.g. emergency medical services, fire departments, police departments involves different technologies and communication and collaboration activities. New technologies promise better support, not only for training, but also for logging relevant information for future analysis and learning. However,...
Using Virtual Reality (VR) models that support planning and design has become increasingly recognized, especially for visualizing future environmental changes. When designing and communicating these changes they are sometimes simplified while at other times photorealistic representations are used. All the parties involved should trust these represe...
The proliferation of mobile technologies promises to improve quality of life, empower us and make us feel safer and more connected. However, this process is slow in the public safety sector due to its requirements for tailored solutions regarding robustness, accessibility, safety and security. Even if there are specially designed solutions on the m...
Based on an empirical study of the launch of an information and communication technology [ICT] system for the main Public Safety Agencies [PSA] in Sweden, this paper combines concepts from knowledge management [KM] with naturalistic decision-making [NDM] to gain a greater understanding of problems in the implementation and adoption phase of the new...
The introduction of virtual reality (VR)-models in the city planning process will cause changes in the traditional roles of the involved parties. In order to better understand some of these changes, the events involving the use of VR-models in an architectural competition concerning rebuilding-proposals for the city library in a Swedish city were a...
Today’s design processes involve many participants and demand new methods of communication for designers, developers and users. Using Virtual Reality (VR) as a design tool has become increasingly common. Regarding visual expression, photorealism is often strived for, even though this might not always be in accordance with the main purpose of the vi...