Multimodal Technologies and Interaction

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in Mexico currently offers an opportunity to adopt immersive virtual reality (VR) as a supplement to teaching methods in elementary education. This article presents the user-centered design (UCD) and exploratory classroom evaluation of Vulcanus, an immersive VR application for volcano-related STEM activities aimed at elementary school students aged 11 to 12. The application combines guided audiovisual content, hand tracking, rover assembly, and robotic exploration tasks. Forty-eight students participated (24 per condition); the 24 VR users completed questionnaires on experience, discomfort, and usability. The results showed an adapted experience score of 32.12/40; the adapted 10-item distress scale yielded a descriptive mean of 5.37/30, and an adapted System Usability Scale (SUS) score of 69.23/100. The classroom intervention included historical knowledge questionnaires; however, their scores were excluded from the main findings because the original open-ended response scoring could not be independently audited. The contribution of this article is the design and exploratory evaluation of an educational VR application with hand tracking.

The rapid development of online learning platforms has made human–computer interaction increasingly important in modern educational and work environments. However, task-oriented interactive experiences remain underexplored, particularly slide-presentation tasks involving university students acting as presenters. In this study, 61 university students (aged 19–23) completed three eye-tracking sub-experiments embedded in online slide-presentation and speaking tasks; eye-movement and questionnaire data were collected to investigate interface layout, emoji use, visualization of audience feedback, and personal status assessment design. Results show that the horizontal layout enabled rapid capture of text and image information; people prefer detailed explanations when making a choice; emoji do not lead to faster attention to the text but did not produce measurable differences in emotional or attentional indices; adding a feedback module does not necessarily promote positive emotions; however, positive feedback can. Combining physiological measures with reflective feedback is essential for understanding emotional experience. These findings provide quantitative evidence for designing interactive interfaces and emotional support in online learning, aiming to improve interaction efficiency, deepen the understanding of users’ emotional experiences, and promote engagement and user retention among online meeting users.

Background/Objectives: Interactive tourism services require service objectives to be translated into meaningful visitor experiences. This study examines how design teams represented visitor motivations in interaction concepts and how documented formative feedback informed refinement. Methods: A retrospective cross-case analysis examined eight industry-engaged projects addressing membership participation or post-visit re-engagement in an anonymised resort context. Project reports, prototype representations, and evaluation accounts were compared. SUS records were examined for documentary coverage rather than used to rank prototypes. Jiaobei provided an illustrative case. Results: Membership concepts embedded benefits within practical and social activities, whereas post-visit concepts proposed cultural, narrative, identity-related, and memory-based reasons to reconnect. Reported feedback informed choices about information visibility, navigation, and participation. Jiaobei linked a proposed physical memento and gesture-based ritual to digital content; navigation feedback was associated with an added map overview. Conclusions: Four provisional principles concern valued activities, voluntary return, complementary modality roles, and recoverable navigation. Their contribution is design-oriented and context-grounded. Incomplete evaluation records, unverified multimodal implementation, and absent post-revision measurements limit empirical claims about usability gains and sustained engagement.