CWI postdoctoral researcher Silvia Rossi was recently one of the invited speakers at the program Cross Media Cafè on October 3, 2023 during the Dutch Media week. The Cross Media Café is organised by Sound & Vision and Media Perspectives and aims at showcasing the latest developments in the field of media, technology and innovation for media professionals. She brought a scientific perspective talking about her work on understanding user behaviour in XR.
The focus of Cross Media Cafè was ‘spatial computing’, a new bridge between the physical and virtual world. By merging the digital and physical dimensions, spatial computing has opened the gate to a futuristic world of virtual interaction and immersive experiences. This topic was discussed by Monique van Dusseldorp together with 6 experts and pioneers in the field who shared their insights on the vast potential and transformative power of spatial computing. Among these invited speakers, there was Silvia Rossi, postdoctoral researcher in the Distributed and Interactive System (DIS) group. She took part in the first round of discussions together with Gabriele Romagnoli (Head of Business at ShapesXR) and Benjamin de Wit (founder VRDays Europe and organizer Immersive Tech Week).
In this first panel, it has been discussed how users undergo this new dimension of interaction with a specific focus on virtual design, user experience and the versatile applications of spatial computing in different domains. In particular, Silvia brought her scientific expertise to the forefront by sharing insights from her research, which delves into understanding users' immersive spatial experiences and their implications for the next generation of multimedia systems. Her recent work, for instance, involved an explorative behavioural analysis of users navigating in an immersive space aimed at understanding how the user experience is affected not only by the visual content and its quality but also by the disposition of the user.
The second panel of the Cross Media Cafè focused on the importance of spatial audio in spatial computing experience with Rufus Baas (quartermaster Metaverse Werkplaats), Jelmer Althuis (founder of Sphere of Sound) and Steye Hallema (Volumetric Director at 4DR Studios).
Check out a report by Media Perspective about Cross Media Cafè: Spatial Computing on October 3, 2023 and the video of the panel in which Silvia participated below.
video: Cross Media Café: Spatial computing | Gabriele Romagnoli | Silvia Rossi | Benjamin de Wit
