• 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

       

      ■ 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!

    • LATEST NEWS

      • 2021.03 Our position paper "Toward Understanding the Social and Societal Implications of Avatar Designs in Social VR" has been accepted to the Social VR workshop at CHI 2021.
      • 2021.03 We'll present "Virtual Co-Embodiment: Evaluation of the Sense of Agency while Sharing the Control of a Virtual Body among Two Individuals" as an invited TVCG paper at IEEE VR 2021. [PDF] 
      • 2020.11 I'll be serving as one of the Program Committee Members at Augmented Humans (AHs) 2021.
      • 2020.09 I will be serving as one of the Publicity Chairs at IEEE VR 2021.
      • 2020.06 CHI 2020 was unfortunately not held, but the online presentation video of our CHI paper is out. [youtube]
      • 2020.05 Our paper entitled "Virtual Co-Embodiment: Evaluation of the Sense of Agency while Sharing the Control of a Virtual Body among Two Individuals" has been accepted to IEEE TVCG [DOI].
      • 2020.04 I've made a presentation of our CHI 2020 paper at Online CHI2020 - Japan Chapter local meeting.
      • 2020.04 Our paper entitled "The relationship between the body and the environment in the virtual world: The interpupillary distance affects the body size perception" has been accepted to PLOS ONE. [DOI]
      • 2020.03 I received Dean's Award for Dissertation Thesis.
      • 2020.03 Our CHI 2020 paper has received an Honorable Mention Award.
      • 2020.01 I've successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Effect of Self-Avatar Anthropomorphism on Perception and Behavior in Virtual Environments." [PDF] 
      • 2020.01 Our paper entitled "Effect of Avatar Appearance on Detection Thresholds for Remapped Hand Movements" has been accepted to IEEE TVCG [PDF]. I'll give a presentation at IEEE VR 2020.
      • 2020.01 Our paper entitled "Do You Feel Like Passing Through Walls?: Effect of Self-Avatar Appearance on Facilitating Realistic Behavior in Virtual Environments" has been accepted to CHI 2020 [PDF] [Appendix] [Video]. See you in Honolulu!

    • PROFESSIONAL/WORK EXPERIENCE

      APR. 2020 - current

      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​

    • EDUCATION

      APR. 2017 - MAR. 2020

      • Ph.D. in Engineering, Department of Advanced Disciplinary Studies, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan
        Advisor: Prof. Michitaka Hirose (Cyber Interface Lab.)

      APR. 2015 - MAR. 2017

      • M.A.Sc., Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo, Japan
        Advisor: Prof. Michitaka Hirose (Cyber Interface Lab.)

      APR. 2010 - MAR. 2015

      • B.A., Department of Psychology, Faculty of Letters, The University of Tokyo, Japan
        Advisor: Prof. Ikuya Murakami

    • RESEARCH PROJECTS

      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] [Presentation Video] [DOI] 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] [Presentation Video] [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

      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] [Presentation video] [DOI]

      Embodied Spatial Perception in VEs

      To be Updated

       

      Keywords: embodied perception, body-based scaling

      • Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, and Michitaka Hirose: Distortion in perceived size and body-based scaling in virtual environments, The 8th International Conference on Augmented Human (AH2017), Silicon Valley, CA, Mar. 2017. [PDF] [DOI]

    • DEMONSTRATIONS

      Metamorphosis Hand

      "Metamorphosis Hand" is a work that provides an experience of having an augmented body by enabling to play the piano with virtual hands whose shape, especially finger lengths, and movement are transforming dynamically.

       

      From a psychological point of view, this system is a tool for investigating "Body Ownership", the conscious experience of the body as one's own.

      I investigate how humans recognize their own bodies by causing illusion as if virtual bodies with different characteristics from their own physical bodies are as their own bodies.

      From an artistic point of view, I made this work with the aim of creating new types of human-tool interaction.
      In our long history, humans have invented tools that are fit for our constrained bodies and evolved ourselves by tool-use.

      Now that we can invent our bodies that are fit for the existing tools by using VR technologies, resulting in a novel human-tool coevolution.

       

      KEYWORDS: body ownership, body augmentation

      Note: There are two versions of the device, each with a corresponding video.

      Nami Ogawa, Yuki Ban, Sho Sakurai, Takuji Narumi, Tomohiro Tanikawa, Michitaka Hirose: Metamorphosis Hand: Dynamically Transforming Hands, The 7th International Conference on Augmented Human (AH2016), Geneva, Switzerland, Feb, 2016. [ACM Digital Library]

      Swinging 3D Lamps

      "Swinging 3D lamps" is a novel naked-eye 3D spatial augmented reality technology that makes a static 2D image look like 3D by adding only motion signals on it. It creates optical 3D illusions of motion parallax by superimposing luminance motion signals on a common picture in a real environment by using a projector. Our basic idea is to combine ”wiggle stereoscopy”, which is a phenomenon involving 3D perception by exploiting motion parallax with ”deformation lamps”, which is a projection technique to make static pictures dynamic.

       

      KEYWORDS: 3D, Spatial AR, Projection, Wiggle Stereoscopy, Motion Parallax

       

      • Nami Ogawa, Jotaro Shigeyama, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose: Swinging 3D Lamps: A Projection Technique to Create 3D Illusions on a Static 2D Image, SIGGRAPH Asia ’17 Emerging Technologies, Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 2017.​ [ACM Digital Library]

      Polyvision

      4D space has always been a source of imagination and intellectual activities for human beings. By our novel visualization technique based on multiple 3D projections created in VR, Polyvision equips us with the sense of 4D letting us explore high dimensional data and mathematical objects in a totally new way.

      • Keigo Matsumoto*, Nami Ogawa*, Hiroyuki Inou, Shizuo Kaji, Yutaka Ishii, Michitaka Hirose: Polyvision: 4D Space Manipulation through Multiple Projections, SIGGRAPH Asia '19 Emerging Technologies, Brisbane, Australia, Nov. 2019. (*: equally contributed) [ACM Digital Library]

    • PUBLICATIONS

      This page contains only international activities. I'm also active domestically as well (especially exhibitions), so if you are interested in domestic activities, please visit my Japanese page. See also Google Scholar.

       

      Selected Papers (w/ PDFs) are listed here!

      Journal Papers

      1. 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] [Presentation video] [DOI]

      2. Daisuke Mine, Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, and Kazuhiko Yokosawa. The relationship between the body and the environment in the virtual world: The interpupillary distance affects the body size perception, PLOS ONE, 15 (4), e0232290, 2020. [DOI]

      3. 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] [Presentation Video] [DOI]

      Peer-reviewed Conference Proceedings

      1. 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), Honolulu, Hawaii, Apr. 2020. [Video] [Presentation Video] [DOI (Open Access)] Honorable Mention Award (Top 5%)
      2. Ryota Ito, Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, and Michitaka Hirose: Do We Have to Look at the Mirror All the Time? Effect of Partial Visuomotor Feedback on Body Ownership of a Virtual Human Tail, Proceedings of the 16th ACM Symposium on Applied Perception, Barcelona, Spain, Sep. 2019.
      3. Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose: Virtual Hand Realism Affects Object Size Perception in Body-Based Scaling, Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality (IEEE VR ’19). Osaka, Japan, March. 2019.​ (Acceptance Rate: 21%)​  [PDF] [Presentation video] [DOI]
      4. Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, and Michitaka Hirose: Factors and Influences of Body Ownership over Virtual Hands, HCI International 2017, Vancouver, Canada, Jul. 2017. (invited)
      5. Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose: Distortion in perceived size and body-based scaling in virtual environments, The 8th International Conference on Augmented Human (AH2017), Silicon Valley, CA, Mar. 2017. [PDF] [DOI]
      6. Shoichi Tagami, Shigeo Yoshida, Nami Ogawa, and Takuji Narumi, Tomohiro Tanikawa, Michitaka Hirose: Routine++: Implementing Pre-Performance Routine in a Short Time with an Artificial Success Simulator, The 8th International Conference on Augmented Human (AH2017), Silicon Valley, CA, Mar. 2017. 
      7. Sho Sakurai, Yuki Ban, Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Tomohiro Tanikawa, and Michitaka Hirose: Diminished Agency: Attenuating a sense of agency for problem finding on personal physical, performance, HCI International 2016, Toronto, Canada, Jul. 2016. (invited)
      8. Nami Ogawa, Yuki Ban, Sho Sakurai, Takuji Narumi, Tomohiro Tanikawa, and Michitaka Hirose: Metamorphosis Hand: Interactive Experience of Embodying Virtually Transformed Hands, Virtual Reality International Conference (VRIC 2016), Laval, France, Mar. 2016.

      Peer-reviewed Demos

      1. Keigo Matsumoto*, Nami Ogawa*, Hiroyuki Inou, Shizuo Kaji, Yutaka Ishii, Michitaka Hirose: Polyvision: 4D space manipulation through multiple projection, SIGGRAPH Asia '19 Emerging Technologies, Brisbane, Australia, Nov. 2019. (*: equally contributed)
      2. Nami Ogawa, Jotaro Shigeyama, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose: Swinging 3D Lamps: A Projection Technique to Create 3D Illusions on a Static 2D Image, SIGGRAPH Asia ’17 Emerging Technologies, Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 2017.
      3. Jotaro Shigeyama, Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Tomohiro Tanikawa, and Michitaka Hirose: Presenting pseudo-haptic feedback in immersive VR environment by modifying avatar’s joint angle, IEEE World Haptics Conference 2017, Munich, Germany, June 2017. 
      4. Nami Ogawa, Yuki Ban, Sho Sakurai, Takuji Narumi, Tomohiro Tanikawa, and Michitaka Hirose: Metamorphosis Hand: Interactive Experience of Embodying Virtually Transformed Hands, Laval Virtual ReVolution 2016, Laval, France, Mar, 2016.
      5. Nami Ogawa, Yuki Ban, Sho Sakurai, Takuji Narumi, Tomohiro Tanikawa, and Michitaka Hirose: Metamorphosis Hand: Dynamically Transforming Hands, The 7th International Conference on Augmented Human (AH2016), Geneva, Switzerland, Feb, 2016. 

      Peer-reviewed Posters

      1. Daisuke Mine, Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, and Kazuhiko Yokosawa: Wider IPD Makes People Perceive Their Body to be not so Large when Large Hands are Presented, International Conference on Artificial Reality and Telexistence Eurographics Symposium on Virtual Environments (ICAT-EGVE '19 Posters), 2019.
      2. Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose: Object Size Perception in Immersive Virtual Reality: Avatar Realism Affects the Way We Perceive, IEEE VR ’18 Posters, Reutlingen, Germany, March. 2018.
      3. Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose: Swinging 3D Lamps: A Projection Technique to Convert a Static 2D Picture to 3D using Wiggle Stereoscopy, SIGGRAPH ’17 Posters, Los Angeles, CA, July. 2017.

      Dissertation

      Effect of Self-Avatar Anthropomorphism on Perception and Behavior in Virtual Environments, Jan. 2020 (defended date). [PDF] [Dean's Award]

      Invited Talks, Non-archival Papers

      1. Nami Ogawa, Shitao Fang, Koji Yatani. Toward Understanding the Social and Societal Implications of Avatar Designs in Social VR, Social VR Workshop at CHI 2021. 2021. [Workshop Paper]
      2. Nami Ogawa, Takuji Narumi, Michitaka Hirose. Realistic Virtual Hand Fosters Self-attribution of Remapped Hand Movements. ACM Symposium on Applied Perception (SAP '19). 2019. [Poster]

      Domestic Publications

      Check here!

    • AWARDS / GRANTS

      AWARDS

      1. 2020
        ACM UIST '20 Special Recognition for Outstanding Reviews
      2. MAR. 2020
        Dean's Award for Dissertation Thesis at Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
      3. Mar. 2020
        Honorable Mention Award at CHI 2020 for our paper entitled "Do You Feel Like Passing Through Walls?: Effect of Self-Avatar Appearance on Facilitating Realistic Behavior in Virtual Environments"
      4. MAR. 2018

        VRSJ Young Researchers Award at the Virtual Reality Society of Japan（日本バーチャルリアリティ学会　学術奨励賞）

      5. MAR. 2017
        Dean's Award for Master's thesis at Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, The University of Tokyo（東京大学大学院学際情報学府　専攻長賞）
      6. MAY. 2016
        VRクリエイティブアワード2016　ファイナリスト

      GRANTS

      1. JAN. 2018- MAY. 2018
        JSPS Overseas Challenge Program for Young Researchers（日本学術振興会 平成29年度若手研究者海外挑戦プログラム）
        (1.4 million Maintenance allowance + Roundtrip international airfare)
      2. APR. 2017 - MAR. 2020
        JSPS Research Fellowship DC1 （日本学術振興会 特別研究員（DC1））
        (2,000 dolls monthly scholarship + around 10,000 dolls research funding for a year, selection ratios 20%)
      3. APR. 2015 - OCT. 2016
        博士課程教育リーディングプログラム　ソーシャルICTグローバル・クリエイティブリーダー育成プログラム（GCL）(2016.10 辞退)

    • ACADEMIC SERVICE

      REVIEWER

      • IEEE ISMAR (2021)
      • ACM TOCHI (2021)
      • Augmented Humans (2021)
      • ACM CHI (2021)
      • ACM UIST (2020)
      • IEEE TVCG (2020, 2021)
      • IEEE VR (2019, 2020, 2021)
      • ACM SAP (2019)
      • Journal of Information Processing (2019)
      • ACM VRST (2018, 2020)
      • 日本バーチャルリアリティ学会論文誌 (2018, 2019)

      COMMITTEE

      • SIGGRAPH Asia 2021 XR Program Committee
      • Augmented Humans 2021 Program Committee
      • IEEE VR 2021 Publicity Co-Chair
      • 日本バーチャルリアリティ学会　ニューズレター編集委員 (2018 - current)
      • 人工知能学会　学生編集委員 (2015 - 2017)

      MISC

      • 日本バーチャルリアリティ学会全国大会内OS　情報技術と文化の融合調査研究委員会（ギラギラ夏祭り）　ファシリテーター（2017, 2018)
      • 人工知能学会倫理委員会　書記 (2015 - 2017)

    • SKILLS

      PROGRAMMING

      Major: C# (Unity)

      Minor: Python, R

      LANGUAGE

      Japanese: Native

      English: Intermediate (TOEIC 940)

    • CONTACT

      ogawa-nami@dmm.com
      ogawa@cyber.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp

      Twitter @nami_ogawa

    Last updated: Feb 11th, 2021

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