EAGER/Collaborative Research: A New Science of Visual Experience

人类经验的本质是通过人类的五种感官，特别是通过视觉，与自然和人造环境相互作用。这个探索性研究（EAGER）项目的早期概念资助的目标是为视觉体验的新科学建立分析基础，将认知科学和系统工程的基本方法连接起来。具体来说，这项研究将建立人类在工厂、博物馆或零售商店等三维空间中导航的数学和计算模型。这个想法是为了深入了解人类技术系统中可观察性和可控性的限制，并提高用户的态势感知能力。如果研究成功，研究人员将能够根据行动的可能性和获取信息的途径来描述情况。这些量化工具将允许工程师设计环境，以实现诸如提高注意力、提高安全性、更好的寻路和改善体验等结果。假以时日，也许可以设计出适应居住在其中的人类的个人属性和身份的交互式环境。这项研究的结果有可能被许多学科使用，如工程、商业、建筑、心理学、认知和人为因素。由学者（工程学、心理学和计算机科学）和两名行业人员组成的多学科研究小组建议将三维环境的视觉体验从直觉和经验领域转移到分析科学领域。该资助的重点将是开发一套通用的分析模型，这些模型来自于对各种特定情境的人与环境相互作用的分析（例如，CCU中的护士，零售商店中的购物者）。在感知-行动基本心理学的坚实基础上，分析模型将把三维空间关系与人眼的视野和人类的物理属性结合起来。最重要的是，该研究将考虑人类在空间中的运动所产生的复杂动态，以及所有伴随的视角变化，以及视觉障碍的出现和消失。人类的表现将在虚拟环境中进行实证检验，以验证视觉体验的分析指标。

The essence of human experience is interacting with the natural and man-made environments through the five human senses, and through vision in particular. The objective of this EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) project is to build analytical foundations for a new science of visual experience that will bridge basic approaches from cognitive science and systems engineering. Specifically, the research will build mathematical and computational models of a human navigating a three dimensional space such as a factory, museum, or retail store. The idea is to gain insights into the limits on observability and controllability in human-technology systems, and to improve the user's situational awareness. If the research is successful, researchers will be able to describe situations in terms of possibilities for action and access to information. Such quantitative tools will allow engineers to design environments to achieve outcomes such as increased focus, improved safety, better wayfinding, and improved experience. In time, it might be possible to engineer interactive environments that adapt to the personal attributes and identities of the humans that inhabit them. The results of the research have the potential to be used by many disciplines such as engineering, business, architecture, psychology, cognition, and human factors.The multidisciplinary research team consisting of academics (engineering, psychology, and computer science) and two industry personnel suggests moving visual experience of a three dimensional environment from the realm of intuition and experience to analytical science. The specific focus of this grant will be on developing a general set of analytical models that emerge from the analysis of a variety of context-specific human-environment interactions (e.g., nurse in CCU, shopper in a retail store). With a solid grounding in the basic psychology of Perception-Action, the analytical models will integrate three-dimensional spatial relationships with the human eye's field of vision and the physical attributes of a human. Most significantly, the research will consider complex dynamics resulting from human movement in the space, with all the attendant changes in visual angles, and the appearance and disappearance of visual obstacles. Human performance will be empirically examined in a Virtual Environment in order to validate the analytical metrics of visual experience.