We are delighted and very proud to announce that Yusra Tehreem, a former member of our lab, has successfully defended her PhD thesis under the supervision of Prof. Pfeiffer and PD Dr. Sven Wachsmuth at Bielefeld University. Her thesis is titled:
“A Systematic and Scalable Design for Industrial Virtual Reality Training based on Maslow’s Theory of Human Needs”
The use of virtual reality to create training environments is well established and continues to advance alongside new hardware and software. Most research, however, focuses on specific training content, complex scenarios, or measuring trainee performance. Far less attention is paid to the more holistic question of what it actually takes to make virtual training pleasant, usable, and sustainable, or to the practical challenges of running training simulations when larger groups of trainees need to be trained in parallel. Both aspects are essential for adopting the technology in today’s educational systems!
Yusra’s dissertation tackles both perspectives. Drawing on motivational theories from psychology, she developed a conceptual framework to inform the design of VR trainings on multiple levels, from physiological needs all the way up to self-actualization. Together with partners from industry, who provided the training scenario and CAD models, she then single-handedly implemented a large-scale VR training scenario, large not only in space, covering several levels of a chemical plant, but also in time, with procedural tasks taking up to an hour to complete. This stands out in a field still largely dominated by short, artificial lab-scale scenarios. Her largest study counted more than 150 participants, most of them from an industrial background rather than the usual higher-education students, an exceptional achievement, especially considering the project ran from 2019 to 2022, in parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are incredibly proud of your work and dedication, and we wish you all the best for your future endeavors.
Congratulations, Dr. Yusra!
