About this Research Topic

Background

In the world of work, working conditions vary greatly depending on the industry and conditions. Even though this variation is large in our daily work, it should be possible to measure planned and pre-designed improvements. In the job-demand resources model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007), work demands, and work resources are compared as key parameters. Companies do not always manage to find a good trade-off between demands and resources. The same applies to the use, testing and evaluation of innovative technologies such as immersive virtual reality. In order to initiate a "change" and enable the implementation of this new technology in everyday working life, enormous efforts are sometimes required that smaller companies are not able to make in addition to their day-to-day business. In addition to factors such as work organization, company structure and ROIs, human factors such as technology acceptance also play a major role. Ultimately, the "sweet spot of innovation" decides between feasibility (technical resources), desirability (human factors) and viability (business) in order to formulate and evaluate innovations with case studies.



In this Research Topic we want to show the implementation of practicality, -suitability as well as applicability (advantages and disadvantages) of immersive virtual reality in everyday work. In this context, the description of development steps (which methods such as focus groups or interviews were used) to develop the specifications for the implementation of the virtual world are just as relevant as a downstream evaluation. Here, the focus will be on studies in the field of different industries (transport, school and education, architecture, engineering, etc.). Central parameters of the evaluations in the field should ideally be qualitative and quantitative in nature (mixed methods design). The data of statistical effects should ideally include not only changes in subjective well-being or performance (preferably with follow-up), but also organizational parameters (changes in sick days, savings in working time, etc.). Reviews are also possible, but should then be carried out systematically or even be supported by key figures in their conclusions (e.g. by meta-analysis).



In this Research Topic, we welcome the submission of novel research contributions where immersive virtual reality systems are proposed or developed for everyday work scenarios and evaluation regarding human factors, organizational parameters were done in field studies. The topics of interest include but are not limited to the following themes in occupational field scenarios:



• Human factors in virtual prototyping and engineering: usability and user experiences

• Virtual safety trainings in high reliability organisations: transfer of learnings in the real world

• Human Resource Management and virtual assessment center: user experience and acceptance

• Candidate experience in apprentices during virtual training: what immersive training fits best

• Human factors in virtual stakeholder management: changes in decision making

• Field experience of building information modeling data as virtual immersive planning tool in architecture: changes in work process and creativity.

• Transfer of immersive virtual knowledge into the working practice: changes in job satisfaction

• Application of virtual reality in school settings: Experiences from teacher perspective

Keywords: Immersive Virtual Reality, Real World Scenarios, Applied Field Studies, Evaluation, Effect Size, Key Performance Indicators, Mixed Methods

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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