Thuong Hoang

• PhD
• Associate Professor at Deakin University

This paper explores enhancing mobile immersive augmented reality manipulations by providing a sense of computer-captured touch through the use of a passive deformable haptic glove that responds to objects in the physical environment. The glove extends our existing pinch glove design with a Digital Foam sensor that is placed under the palm of the ha...

Requirements engineering (RE) plays a crucial role in developing software systems by bridging the gap between stakeholders' needs and system specifications. However, effective communication and elicitation of stakeholder requirements can be challenging, as traditional RE methods often overlook emotional cues. This paper introduces a multi-modal emo...

As the creators, designers, coders, testers, users, and occasional abusers of all software systems-including cyber security systems - humans should be at the centre of all design and development efforts. Despite this, most software engineering and cyber security research and practices tend to be function, data, or process oriented. In contrast, hum...

Usability is a principal aspect of the system development process to improve and augment system facilities and meet users’ needs and necessities in all domains. It is no exception for cultural heritage. Usability problems of the interactive technology practice in cultural heritage museums should be recognized thoroughly from the viewpoints of exper...

The cultural heritage (CH) sector has always been looking for preeminent ways to improve visitors’ interactions with their collections through interactive technologies such as applications and websites. However, economic inequality between developed and developing countries hinders the effective and widespread deployment of interactive technologies...

Social virtual reality (social VR) is an emerging technology that has the potential to support unique social experiences for groups of older adults. In this paper we explore the use of social VR to support group reminiscence, an activity that has been shown to have a positive impact on the lives of older adults. We developed School Days, a bespoke...

Due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a renewed interest in expanding the capabilities of remote collaboration tools. Studies show the importance of noticing peripheral cues, pointing to or manipulating real-world objects in face-to-face meetings. This case study investigated the opportunities of combining traditional video conferenci...

Students with mild intellectual disabilities need explicit vocabulary instruction with multiple exposures in different contexts and extra practice in associating meanings to unfamiliar words to build their word knowledge. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of multimedia-based computer assisted instruction on learning the meanings o...

Wearable technologies offer potential in supporting assessment of lower limb movements in video consultations, which otherwise are challenging to assess. Yet there remains a limited understanding of how such technologies can be used to improve video consultations in a hospital setting and how they contribute to the clinician-patient interactions ov...

A growing body of research is examining the way that virtual reality (VR) technology might enrich the lives of older adults. However, no studies have yet examined how this technology---combining head mounted displays, motion tracking, avatars, and virtual environments---might contribute to older adult wellbeing by facilitating greater social partic...

There is growing interest in technologies that allow older adults to socialise across geographic boundaries. An emerging technology in this space is social virtual reality (VR). In this paper we report on a series of participatory design workshops that involved extended in-depth collaboration with 22 older adults (aged 70-81), that aimed to underst...

We present two studies to discuss the design, usability analysis, and educational outcome resulting from our system Augmented Body in physiotherapy classroom. We build on prior user-centric design work that investigates existing teaching methods and discuss opportunities for intervention. We present the design and implementation of a hybrid system...

Sketching is universal. It enables us to work through problems, communicate complexity, work with people who have diverse needs, and document work processes we employ within Human-Computer Interaction. Increased interest in sketching as a methodology within HCI has led to increased attendance of interactive courses, meet-ups, and discussion groups,...

Current techniques for teaching spinal mobilisation follow the traditional classroom approach: an instructor demonstrates a technique and students attempt to emulate it by practising on each other while receiving feedback from the instructor. This paper introduces SpinalLog, a novel tangible user interface (TUI) for teaching and learning spinal mob...

Participatory research methods are increasingly being adopted when designing and evaluating emerging technologies for older adults. This chapter details our approach to applying participatory methods to our work with a group of older adults during series of workshops. The workshops involved working with 25 adults from both regional and metropolitan...

We propose a new approach to the 3D layout problems based on the integration of constraint programming and virtual reality interaction techniques. Our method uses an open-source constraint solver integrated in a popular 3D game engine. We designed multimodal interaction techniques for the system, based on gesture and voice input. We conducted a use...

Objectives There are growing concerns that social isolation presents risks to older people's health and well‐being. Thus, the objective of the review was to explore how technology is currently being utilised to combat social isolation and increase social participation, hence improving social outcomes for older people. Methods A systematic review o...

The human body in HCI is often seen as an actuator for issuing commands and providing input to digital systems. We present the concept of the body as a canvas, in which the body acts as both an actuator and a display for information. Body as a canvas creates an interaction loop where interaction with information causes changes in the body, which in...

Virtual reality (VR) is now being designed and deployed in diverse sensitive settings, especially for therapeutic purposes. For example, VR experiences are used for diversional therapy in aged care and as therapy for people living with conditions such as phobias and post-traumatic stress. While these uses of VR offer great promise, they also presen...

Sketching is of great value as a process, input, output and tool in HCI, but can be confined to individual ideation or note-taking, as few researchers have the confidence to document events, studies and workshops under the public gaze. The recent surge in interest in this sometimes-overlooked skill has manifested itself in courses, workshops and li...

Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies are increasingly utilized by public facing Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) institutions to convey both heritage and contemporary stories, information, and experiences. However, within these media, the visitors are often overwhelmed by the virtual environment, resulting in the cultural her...

Background An understanding of how to translate anatomical knowledge and application of body mechanics to dynamic scenarios with real-life clients and movement is often a challenge for physiotherapy students. Objective Augmented Studio is an augmented reality system that helps facilitate this by projecting anatomical structures over moving bodies...

Fiducial markers are images or landmarks placed in real environment, typically used for pose estimation and camera tracking. Reliable fiducials are strongly desired for many Augmented Reality (AR) applications, but currently there is no systematic method to design highly reliable fiducials. In this paper, we present Fiducial Marker Optimizer (FMO),...

The growth of commercial VR technology has fueled an interest in user embodiment, where a graphical representation of the user, a virtual avatar, enables a more immersive experience and richer interaction. Recent research suggests that older adults are increasingly playing digital games. These factors, combined with the rapidly ageing population, m...

While physiotherapists are increasingly organizing video consultations, assessment of lower body movements over video remains a challenge. We present a wearable technology, SoPhy that captures and presents information related to three key aspects of lower limb movements - range of foot movement, weight distribution and foot orientation. SoPhy consi...

Hand-drawn sketches can be an easy way for HCI researchers to communicate and express ideas, as well as to document, explore and communicate concepts between the researcher and user, collaborator, manager or client. These sketches are fast, lightweight, easy to create, and -- by varying their fidelity -- they can be used in all stages of the HCI re...

Physiotherapy students often struggle to translate anatomical knowledge from textbooks into a dynamic understanding of the mechanics of body movements in real life patients. We present the Augmented Studio, an augmented reality system that uses body tracking to project anatomical structures and annotations over moving bodies for physiotherapy educa...

Physiotherapists are increasingly using video conferencing tools for their teleconsultations. Yet, the assessment of subtle differences in body movements remains a challenge. To support lower limb assessment in video consultations, we present SoPhy, a wearable technology consisting of a pair of socks with embedded sensors for patients to wear; and...

This paper proposes a combination of virtual reality (VR) and constraint programming (CP) to develop an efficient system that will assist users with performing 3D layout tasks in a virtual environment. An experimental study has been carried out to investigate to which extent the solver's assistance affects user performance in 3D-layout tasks. Volun...

Aim To assist physiotherapy students in translating anatomical knowledge to dynamic movement scenarios using spatial augmented reality annotation on bodies performing activities. Physiotherapy students often have difficulties in learning how to integrate difference facets of information, to generate diagnostic hypotheses, which highlights the need...

We introduce HandLog, a novel handheld interaction device that supports single handed deformation through finger flexion as a continuous digital input. It consists of a 3D printed core inserted within a foam sleeve embedded with conductive foam columns. By measuring resistance changes across the columns during deformation, whole hand or individual...

User input gloves and input methods are described that are well suited to provide input to computer modeling ( eg CAD) and augmented reality (AR) systems, including wearable AR and spatial AR. Each glove comprises palm mounted ultra­sonic transducers, accelerometers, finger based pinch inputs and a wireless communication module. The gloves can be u...

Since the introduction of the modem internet, computers have assumed a key role in facilitating communication in the developed world. However, until recently many older people have struggled to use ICTs for communication and social participation. This began to change with the introduction of mass market touch-screen computers in 2007, and in just u...

We present Onebody, a virtual reality system for remote posture guidance during sports or physical activity training, such as martial arts, yoga or dance, using first person perspective. The system uses skeletal tracking of the instructor and the students, rendered as virtual avatars. Using a virtual reality headset, the student can visualise the m...

This paper investigates the challenges of bodily communication during video-based clinical consultations. While previous works describe the lack of eye contact and gestures over video, it is unclear how these limitations impact the course of a clinical consultation, particularly in a domain like physiotherapy where the focus is on improving body mo...

In recent years a variety of mobile apps, wearable technologies and embedded systems have emerged that allow individuals to track the amount and the quality of their sleep in their own beds. Despite the widespread adoption of these technologies, little is known about the challenges that current users face in tracking and analysing their sleep. Henc...

We present a tangible virtual kitchen system for the rehabilitation of Alzheimer's patients. The system utilizes Sifteo cube, a commercially available product containing physical cubes with touch screen, accelerometers, and neighboring sensors. The system supports intuitive and natural user interactions to improve motor skill rehabilitation for eve...

This paper presents distance-based interactions for wearable augmented reality systems enabled by an Ultrasonic Glove input device. The ultrasonic glove contains a tilt sensor and a pair of ultrasonic transducers in the palms. The transducers are distance-ranging sensors that emit ultrasonic waves from the palm of the hand. We developed distance-ba...

We present a passive deformable haptic (PDH) glove to enhance mobile immersive augmented reality manipulation with a sense of computer-captured touch, responding to objects in the physical environment. We extend our existing pinch glove design with a Digital Foam sensor, placed under the palm of the hand. The novel glove input device supports a ran...

We present a set of distance-based interaction techniques for modeling and manipulation, enabled by a new input device called the ultrasonic gloves. The ultrasonic gloves are built upon the original design of the pinch glove device for virtual reality systems with a tilt sensor and a pair of ultrasonic transducers in the palms of the gloves. The tr...

In this chapter we present our research directions on the problem of action at a distance in outdoor augmented reality using wearable computers. Our most recent work presents the augmented viewport technique to enable interactions with distant virtual objects in augmented reality. Our technique utilizes physical cameras to provide real world inform...

In this paper, we describe the Augmented Viewport, a new action at a distance technique for outdoor augmented reality using wearable computers. Augmented viewport is inspired by the virtual viewport window that has been widely used in virtual reality systems. Our technique utilizes a physical camera, which either is placed at a distant location or...

We present a set of techniques to perform in-situ refinements on simple geo-referenced models using mobile augmented reality systems. The refinements include affine transformations to the model and surface feature additions, including high detail concave and convex features. The techniques employ pinch gloves and a single-point laser rangefinder au...

This paper explores how a wearable computer with an augmented reality interface can provide real time contextual interactions, based on location aware Web 2.0 social network information.

This paper presents a set of large object manipulation techniques implemented in a wearable augmented reality computer system that are optimised for the outdoor setting. These techniques supplement the current image plane approach, to provide a comprehensive solution to 3D object manipulation in an augmented reality outdoor environment. The three e...

We present a design and implementation of an in-situation menu system for loading and visualising 3D models in a physical world context. The menu system uses 3D objects as menu items, and the whole menu is placed within the context of the augmented environment. The use of 3D objects supports the visualisation and placement of 3D models into the aug...

This paper presents a set of large object manipulation techniques implemented in the Tinmith system that are optimized for an outdoor setting. The extended manipulation techniques for rotation, translation and scaling are focused on using what we determined to be the best coordinate system to operate in, and supplement the current techniques using...

We present a demonstration of an in-situation menu system for loading and visualizing 3D models in a physical world context. The menu system uses 3D objects as menu items, and the whole menu is placed within the context of the augmented environment. The use of 3D objects supports the visualization and placement of 3D models into the augmented world...

We present a design and implementation of an in- situation menu system for loading and visualizing 3D models in the physical world context. The menu system uses 3D objects as menu items, and is directly placed within the context of the augmented environment, to support visualizing and placing 3D models into the augmented world. The menu system empl...

In this paper we present our research directions on the issue of precise manipulation and modeling interactions for outdoor augmented reality. We also discuss the related issues of action at a distance techniques and the relationship between virtual and physical objects. Techniques for action at a distance are limited by the accuracy of the sensors...

This paper presents an extension to our augmented viewport technique for action at a distance for outdoor AR systems by employing the use of different physical camera positions. The original technique augments the user's view with video images from a physical zoom lens camera to provide advantageous viewing windows into the augmented environment, t...