Immersion, representation and collaboration in Virtual Reality: discussion and empirical perspectives in cognitive ergonomics

Studies in ergonomics of Virtual Reality were initially centred on the physical dimensions of user interaction and on some physiological aspects related to the exposure to Virtual Environments. The development of new generations of usable and useful Virtual Environments will be based on the actual needs and consequently implies to integrate the cognitive dimension of complex human activities associated with these technologies. After a brief presentation of cognitive ergonomics contributions to the design and the evaluation of Virtual Environments, this article relates the results of current research and discusses some empirical perspectives for three topics related to the users behaviours and interaction in Virtual-Environments: (a) the influence of immersion on the cognitive processes while achieving a task; (b) the representations of users and of their behaviours (e.g. avatars) and the use of the same techniques to create anthropomorphic representations of software agents; (c) the cooperative aspects of users activities within virtual environments.