To what degree do interactive agents enhance the willingness-to-adopt IX?

IX environments have the potential to transform the way that learners train to perform real-world interactive motor tasks. Think for example how doctors physically interact with each other while performing surgery, soldiers learns to coordinate in combat, or athletes train to deceive opponents. We have developed the ability to implement interactive agents (avatars) in IX that physically respond to the actions of learners, yet these are challenging to model and computationally expensive to implement and it remains unclear whether they make users more willing-to-adopt IX for training purposes.
The aim of this project is to evaluate the degree to which interactive agents enhance the willingness-to-adopt IX training environments. We harness football as an ideal IX task to enhance skill given the cultural relevance and the size of the market in the Netherlands. We will bring together a team of movement scientists, IX developers, and a user-experience designer to examine the experiences of participants taking part in an XR football training task. Participants will learn to move to position themselves to optimally receive a pass in football to compare outcomes when the virtual defenders do and do not interact with the movements of the learner.
We believe that willingness-to-adopt is enhanced if interactive agents improve (1) the user experience, and (2) the effectiveness of learning. To address user experience, we will use interviews and questionnaires to evaluate the impact of interactive agents on footballers’ willingness-to-adopt. For the effectiveness of learning, we will establish the degree to which training against interactive agents enhances football performance. In sum, our findings will evaluate the effectiveness of interactive agents for enhancing the willingness-to-adopt IX and in doing so will provide the Dutch IX ecosystem with a competitive advantage in identifying opportunities for market growth.