ABOUT ME
Nami Ogawa is a principal research scientist at DMM VR lab in Tokyo, Japan. She also works as a joint researcher at Virtual Reality Educational Research Center, The University of Tokyo (Amemiya Lab.). She completed her Ph.D. in Engineering at The University of Tokyo in Japan under the supervision of Michitaka Hirose, co-advised by Takuji Narumi.
Her research lies at the intersection of Virtual Reality (VR) and perceptual psychology. She is interested in how the embodiment of virtual avatars affects user experiences both perceptually and behaviorally in virtual environments.
■ Research Interests
- Why Body Ownership Matters?: Effect of Self-Avatar Appearances on Perception and Behavior in VEs
- Although current VR applications use various appearances of self-avatars, anthropomorphism (i.e., visual human resemblance) is a key factor of the Body Ownership Illusion (BOI); the closer the appearance of the avatar and human bodies, the stronger the BOI. Despite a considerable body of literature on the effects of self-avatar anthropomorphism on the BOI, little is known about its effects on users’ experiences—how they perceive and behave—in VEs. My Ph.D. thesis tackled this issue. Elucidating the effect of self-avatar anthropomorphism contributes to proposing a way to navigate users’ perceptions and behavior in VEs by controlling the appearances of the avatar.
- Embodied Spatial Perception in VEs
In VEs, we handle virtual bodies with different sizes and characteristics from our actual bodies. I am considering how this affects the way we perceive the external world. Especially, I am focusing on the phenomenon that the scale of the self-body influences the scale of the world (body-based scaling). I am also examining the difference in the scale perception between the real and virtual environments.
■ Keywords
virtual reality, sense of body ownership, sense of agency, embodied perception, (self-)avatar, body-based scaling
■ CV: [PDF] (updated: May. 2021)
■ Selected Papers [link]
■ Interviews
- Alumni Voices at RCAST, UTokyo [English]/[Japanese]
- Bilingual News (Podcast) [Mix of English & Japanese]
- Mogura VR [Japanese]
■ Are you interested In collaborative research?
I am always looking for collaborative research opportunities! DMM VR lab actively promotes collaborative research with both academia and industry, and we offer a budget for research collaborations. For further information, please do not hesitate in contacting me!
- Why Body Ownership Matters?: Effect of Self-Avatar Appearances on Perception and Behavior in VEs
PROFESSIONAL/WORK EXPERIENCE
APR. 2020 - current
- Principal Research Scientist at DMM VR lab, Japan
- Joint Researcher at Virtual Reality Educational Research Center, The University of Tokyo, Japan (Amemiya Lab.)
JAN. 2018 - JUN. 2018
- INRIA Rennes (France), Visiting Researcher (Hybrid Team)
Advisor: Dr. Anatole Lécuyer
OCT. 2017 - NOV. 2017
- NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Intern (Sensory Representation Research Group)
Advisor: Dr. Takahiro Kawabe
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Reducing Fear of Missing Out in 360° Videos Using a Panoramic Thumbnail
Viewers of 360° videos often feel fear of missing out (FOMO) because they can only see a part of the video. To address this issue, we developed a technique to display thumbnails of 360° videos so that viewers can grasp the entire video when necessary. We showed that the proposed method can mitigate FOMO without compromising the sense of presence.
Keywords: 360° Video, FOMO, Sense of Presence
- Shoma Yamaguchi, Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi. Now I’m Not Afraid: Reducing Fear of Missing Out in 360° Videos on a Head-Mounted Display Using a Panoramic Thumbnail, Proceedings of 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR '21) [PDF] [Appendix] [Video] [Video (Talk)] [DOI]
- Press Release (written in Japanese)
Effect of Self-Avatar Appearance on Facilitating Realistic Behavior in VEs
By hypothesizing that a greater sense of presence would discourage users from behaving unrealistically in virtual environments (VEs), we examined how self-avatar appearances affect users’ behaviors and showed the realistic full-body self-avatar was the most effective for enhancing realistic behaviors.
Keywords: Self-Avatar, Sense of Presence, Sense of Body Ownership
- Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Hideaki Kuzuoka, and Michitaka Hirose. Do You Feel Like Passing Through Walls?: Effect of Self-Avatar Appearance on Facilitating Realistic Behavior in Virtual Environments, 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '20), 2020. [Video] [Video (Talk)] [DOI (Open Access)] Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%), Open Access
Effect of Avatar Appearance on Detection Thresholds for Remapped Hand Movements
The study showed that realistic virtual hands (vs. abstract) can increase the detection thresholds for remapping technique wherein virtual and physical movements are in conflict; realistic avatars can make remapping less noticeable for larger mismatches.
Keywords: Self-Avatar, Sense of Body Ownership, 3DUI
- Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose: Effect of Avatar Appearance on Detection Thresholds for Remapped Hand Movements, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2020. [PDF] [Video] [Video (Talk)] [DOI]
Virtual Co-embodiment: Sharing the Control of a Virtual Body among Two Individuals
We introduced a concept "virtual co-embodiment", which enables a user to share their virtual avatar with another entity and described a proof-of-concept in which two users can be immersed from 1PP in a VE and can have complementary levels of control over a shared avatar. We also conducted an experiment to investigate the influence of users' level of control over the shared avatar and prior knowledge of their actions (i.e., task types) on the users' sense of agency and motor actions.
Keywords: Sense of Agency
- Rebecca Fribourg*, Nami Ogawa*, Ludovic Hoyet, Ferran Argelaguet, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose, Anatole Lécuyer: Virtual Co-Embodiment: Evaluation of the Sense of Agency while Sharing the Control of a Virtual Body among Two Individuals, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2020. (*: equally contributed) [PDF] [Video (Short)] [Video (Long)] [Video (Talk)] [DOI]
- Article by INRIA | Two people slipped into the same body ...virtually!
- Interactive demonstration at Altered Festival 2020
Virtual Hand Realism Affects Object Size Perception in Body-Based Scaling
Considering the theory that the scale of the external environment is perceived relative to the size of one's body, we hypothesized that self-avatar appearances affect how we perceive not only virtual bodies but also virtual spaces.
Therefore, this study examines how avatar anthropomorphism affects perceived object sizes as the size of the virtual hand changes. The results show that the size of the cube is perceived to be smaller when the virtual hand is enlarged only in the case of a realistic virtual hand.
Keywords: Self-Avatar, Sense of Body Ownership, Body-Based Scaling
- Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, and Michitaka Hirose: Virtual Hand Realism Affects Object Size Perception in Body-Based Scaling, IEEE VR ’19 Osaka, Japan, March. 2019. [PDF] [Video (Talk)] [DOI]
Embodied Spatial Perception in VEs
VEs are often said to be compressed in terms of spatial perception. We found that size perception is distorted in a VE, and the distortion is different between virtual objects and one's own virtual hands; virtual hands are perceived as larger, whereas objects are perceived as smaller in VEs than in real environments. In addition, we showed that interaction between hands and objects affects size perception as well.
Keywords: embodied perception, body-based scaling
CONTACT
ogawa-nami@
dmm.com
ogawa@cyber.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp Twitter @
nami_ogawa
