Real and Virtual

I read an article recently on Exploring Human Factors in Virtual Worlds by POORNIMA PADMANABHAN. This article is about how we humans interact with the emerging technology of virtual worlds. As the title says the author explores the three major human factors of the virtual worlds. These factors are; Human performance efficiency, Health and safety, and Social implications. The author describes each of these factors as follows. Human performance efficiency, this explains how much virtual reality or world should represent the real world, the author expatiates on this factor by dividing it into another three different factors which are; Degree of presence in the environment, Task characteristics, and Diversity of content types . The author further explains these factors. Degree of presence is how much the user has to interact with the medium by which he or she gets to the virtual world. Task characteristics is defined as how much similarities are between the two world, let’s say comparing maintenance on the space station, one that is done in virtual word and one that is done in real life, how similar are they. The last factor under the degree of presence is diversity of content type which is simply defined as the number of different types of contents. Then the author explains the other two major human factors. Health and safety pertains to the health risks of having to use the mediums to get to the virtual worlds while the safety part has to do with people who are getting hurt in real life, one of the examples the author stated was stalking. The last factor is social Implementation which means how users will relate with each other in such a ways that could mimic the real life.

This article is a well research based article in such a way that the author used information from a lot of resources, I will totally agree with these main factors as it will defiantly be in our minds as a top list requirement for implementing a perfect virtual world.

This article is well organized and the author used the appropriate template for the layout. When I was reading the article I felt that the time moved faster than the information I absorbed, as in I read the seven pages worth PDF file at once without even blinking.
I can say that the author really put a lot of time in the organization of this article, at list a lot than I did in reading and writing this blog. The authors’ arrangement is of all the information into one article is phenomenon. The author also used different correlating visuals to further explain the key points.

Adding to the conclusion, evolving this technology for the regular people is not so much necessary as it looks except there are tangible purposes for doing so. I think simulation or virtual reality or virtual word should be used as a supplement for example to cut cost of a full scale work or to practice almost real life scenario of a task. In this way we won’t have to worry about some of the factors that affect the way we view virtual worlds. This will also fulfill most of the factors, in order words the providers of the virtual world will prepare and provide the most adequate equipments and information to successfully complete the task. For example; NASA and other aviation companies have their own practice simulation that mimics the real deal.