Bridging continents with AR/VR

Since encountering AR/VR for the first time, I’ve been driven to be at the forefront of this exciting technology with its tremendous potential to shape new digital experiences and bring people closer together.

I believe the future of these technologies is built on understanding how people use new technology and finding answers to meaningful questions that identify the benefits of AR/VR for impactful experiences.

After calling Australia my home for many years and now being back in Europe, I am especially invested in finding ways for people to feel connected with loved ones who are far away. My goal is to explore future AR/VR applications that delight and inspire in meaningful ways, unlocking how people can develop rich social experiences even across continents.

Have a look at some past and ongoing work

Key Skills

Generating user insights on user perception in AR/VR in collaborative and single-user settings using mixed methods, physiological sensing, and interpreting behavioral data.
Designing experiences to enhance how connected people feel in AR/VR and identifying ways to deepen their social connections.
Identifying the impact of 3D reconstruction on user perception and how people perceive avatars in VR.
Creating impactful AR/VR applications to radically improve how we interact with new technology.
Communicating insights to cross-functional teams (XFN) and guiding development to deliver an engaging user experience.
Effective collaborator and thought leader on strategic decisions and user advocacy.
Prototyping ideas, experiences, and scenarios at the intersection of science, design, and development.

Interaction Mode

Education

PhD in Computer Science, University of South Australia
MSc in Digital Media, University of Bremen
BA in Design, University of Applied Sciences Mainz

Awards and Achievements

International student of the year – Highly commended

Nominee Best Paper IEEE VR 2022
Honourable Mention Award Best of CHI – CHI Conference 2021
Finalist UniSA Research Excellence Awards 2020 (Research degree candidate)
Highly Commended Academic Excellence in Postgraduate Research 2019 awarded by His Excellency the Honourable Hieu Van Le AC, Governor of South Australia
1st Place Winner Retail Game Changer Challenge 2019: $25.000 AUD
Club of the Year 2019 Women in STEM UniSA Club
Shortlisted Google Women Techmaker APAC 2019
Division Finalist 3 Minute Thesis 2018
Winner :output Design award: Design of an interactive application
Winner Global Game Jam Bremen 2012: „Most creative game“ and „Best concept“
Winner :output Design award: Branding for a design conference

In the Media

ABC News: Virtual reality and its potential in crime scene tours - Law report with Damien Carrick. (July 2021)
The Advertiser: University of SA study finds VR headsets allow juries to deliver fairer verdicts in complex crime trials. (July 2021)
Mashable: Jurors could use VR to visit crime scenes, and help them reach a verdict. (July 2021)
Daily Mail: Jurors using virtual reality headsets to see the crime scene are nearly 87% more likely to agree on a unanimous verdict than those who only see photographs. (July 2021)
The Advertiser: University of SA investigates using virtual reality to walk trial juries through crime scenes. (March 2019)
UniSA News: The technology to take a jury into a 3D crime scene. (March 2019)
SA Lead: Virtual Reality more reliable than photographs for jurors. (March 2019)
Futurithmic: How VR is changing the game beyond consumer value. (May 2019)

Example Publications

Best Paper Nominee C. Reichherzer, A. Cunningham, J. Barr, T. Coleman, K. McManus, D. Sheppard, S. Coussens, M. Kohler, B. H. Thomas. 2022. Supporting Jury Understanding of Expert Evidence in a Virtual Environment. IEEE VR 2022

Honourable Mention Award C. Reichherzer, A. Cunningham, T. Coleman, R. Cao, K. McManus, D. Sheppard, M. Kohler, M. Billinghurst, and B. H. Thomas. 2021. Bringing the Jury to the Scene of the Crime: Memory and Decision-Making in a Simulated Crime Scene. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 12 pages.

C. Reichherzer, J. Fraser and M. Billinghurst. 2021. SecondSight: Demonstrating Cross-Device Augmented Reality. In Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques Conference Immersive Pavilion (SIGGRAPH ‘21 Immersive Pavilion), August 09-13, 2021, Virtual Event, USA. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3 Pages.

C. Reichherzer, J. Fraser, D. Constantine Rompapas, and M. Billinghurst. 2021. SecondSight: A Framework for Cross-Device Augmented Reality Interfaces. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ‘21 Extended Abstracts), May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 6 pages

C. Reichherzer, A. Cunningham, J. Walsh, M. Kohler, M. Billinghurst and B. H. Thomas, “Narrative and Spatial Memory for Jury Viewings in a Reconstructed Virtual Environment,” in IEEE Transactions on Visualization & Computer Graphics, vol. 24, no. 11, pp. 2917-2926, 2018.

C. Reichherzer, A. Nassani and M. Billinghurst, “[Poster] Social panoramas using wearable computers,” 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR), Munich, Germany, 2014, pp. 303-304.

Teaching and Volunteering

Teaching assistant at the University of South Australia

Programming Fundamentals: Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with Java
Interface Design, Interaction and Experience: Introduction to human centered design, app development with JavaFX
Virtual Reality: Introduction to Unity3D and HTC Vive
Data Structures: Lists, Stacks, Queues, Maps and Sets

Guest lecturer at the University of South Australia

Augmented Reality Interaction

Volunteer

CHI 2022-2024: Associate Chair (Specific Applications Areas)
Women in STEM Club UniSA: Co-Founder and Planning Director. I defined the groups core vision of Innovation, Inclusion and Inspiration. I am also responsible for creating and maintaining our project schedules and help acquire grants.
Code like a girl: Event volunteer and panelist

Volunteering

Research Grants

Data to Decisions CRC Applied Research Grant 2019
Data to Decisions CRC Applied Research Grant 2018
Equipment Grant (UniSA): $73.900 AUD
Women in Stem Club: $10.000 AUD