Measuring and Maximizing User Experience for Virtual Reality

Transcription

1 Measuring and Maximizing User Experience for Virtual Reality Virtual Travel Experiences Prove to be Highly Effective Written by: Sponsored by: VR Analytics Technology by: February 2016

2 Today s Business Executives Face An Innovation Challenge Business executives across a growing number of industries face an innovation challenge. They are beginning to understand that companies must embrace technologies such as virtual reality ( VR ), not as an emerging technology to keep an eye on, but as a serious tool within an everincreasing strategic toolbox. In order to embrace these new opportunities, executives must understand a set of complex technologies, understand rapidly-evolving best practices, listen closely to early adopters, and turn creative ideas into tangible business objectives. Emerging VR technologies are now providing new and profound ways for customers to directly engage and interact with products or virtual experiences. This has marketers and experience designers intrigued about the prospects of interaction and engagement with their respective brands in virtual worlds or environments. The challenge for executives now is to understand how to leverage this new technology to create a clear and measurable impact on their business. The Risk and Opportunity in Virtual Reality Developing for VR platforms, whether it be mobile or desktop VR systems, requires a significant investment in both time and production costs. However, developing for an emerging medium with evolving best practices adds an entirely new layer of risk. In an effort to mitigate some of that risk, Greenlight VR and Ease VR embarked upon a new user study to determine if analytics could provide measurable insight and data on consumer experiences within VR. The user study applied human factors theory to several publicly available VR experiences to understand common thresholds regarding feelings of simulator sickness (SIM), joy, excitement, fears, and presence in a focus group sample. The goal of the study was to collect data that would give a better picture of commercial viability within VR. For example, it was important to measure the levels of negative affections towards a VR application including simulator sickness, anxiety, fear, and sadness. Likewise, it was also important to measure the levels of joy, excitement, and amazement felt during various VR applications. Once VR experience designers can better understand these data points, the information could yield valuable insights for strategic decisions about VR development. With this kind of scientific underpinning to the data, the opportunity to project a more accurate return in an uncertain marketplace becomes greater. That is why YouVisit, a platform for creating, sharing and exploring VR experiences, opted to test their own content in order to understand and develop best practices. YouVisit s Carnival Cruise experience, which can be found on Google Cardboard, Samsung s Gear VR, and Oculus Rift was tested among the subjects along with numerous applications, including travel, music, and games. The user study allowed YouVisit to collect valuable comparative analysis across devices, applications and experiences. 1

3 Leveraging an Analytics Platform Yields Powerful Insights The study leveraged Ease VR s methodology and technology to capture user analytics and understand the impact of VR applications on various human factors. The study measured human factors such as emotional responses, comfort, dizziness, headaches, nausea, excitement, happiness, sadness, scariness and presence vital components of exceptional VR experiences. Forty-two participants were selected and the study was conducted in December This paper will examine the results of the virtual travel experiences tested. Exhibit 1: View from YouVisit s Carnival Experience Image courtesy of YouVisit Controlling for variables such as predispositions for fatigue and motion sickness preceded testing with the goal of screening participants who were well-rested and not at risk of becoming ill from limited VR exposure. Multiple variables were studied with the goal of understanding feelings of presence, comfort, and usability across multiple participants. 2

4 80% Felt Transported to another World by Travel-Based VR The study revealed interesting insights related to presence among those specifically testing the travel-based VR experiences. Feelings of being transported to another world, excitement, and amazement were reported in high numbers. Over half of the sample felt the experience was amazing with 33% saying they agreed and 25% saying they strongly agreed. On top of feelings of amazement, 66% of participants reported feeling excited as a direct result of the experience. Finally, and most importantly, after viewing the experience 80% of the sample said they felt transported to another world with a majority (45%) stating they strongly agree. Virtual travel experiences scored higher in the sense of presence than all other categories, including games. In fact, virtual travel had higher ratings of both amazement and joy amongst the respondents. The sense of presence is especially noteworthy in the study given that presence is vital for VR it is the only aspect of the medium that is truly distinct from conventional forms of media. For example, virtual travel would not be nearly as effective if you couldn t believe you were on a beach in Bali. VR as a medium demands this level of presence, and as indicated from this data, it is achievable in travel-based experiences. Exhibit 2: Human Factor Scores for Travel-Based VR Experience Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree That experience transported me to a different world 45% 35% 5% 10% 5% That experience made me feel joy 23% 38% 20% 10% 10% That experience was amazing 25% 33% 28% 10% 5% That experience made me feel excited 23% 43% 18% 13% 5% That experience made me feel scared 3% 0% 5% 10% 83% That experience made me feel anxious 3% 5% 10% 18% 65% That experience made me feel sad 0% 3% 8% 15% 75% I feel nauseous right now 3% 3% 13% 10% 73% I am feeling dizzy right now 0% 8% 10% 23% 60% I have a headache right now 0% 0% 8% 15% 78% Source: Ease VR Human Factors Research (n=42) 3

5 Over 80% Felt No Adverse Health Effects Going further, it was also important to analyze adverse health effects for users in VR. Leveraging Ease VR s platform, considerably low levels of motion sickness were reported by the sample. Specifically, 83% of respondents reported not feeling dizzy, 93% did not have a headache, and 83% did not feel nauseous after the experience. The data in this focus group coincides with Greenlight VR s consumer studies, where health concerns emerge as a primary concern yet excitement for virtual travel, tourism, and adventure is especially strong across all generations. Virtual Reality Travel Applications Have Immense Potential The data and results presented in this study indicate that VR travel experiences are consumerready. That is why it is important for virtual travel marketers and developers alike to understand the limitations to overcome for their audience so they can fully immerse themselves in VR experiences. As long as best practices for application development are followed to minimize common thresholds of simulator sickness and maximize feelings of presence and enjoyment, virtual travel has the potential to garner mass-adoption. 4

6 Appendix: What Are Human Factors Research? Human factors is the discipline of researching and designing devices or systems that work with our own bodies. This includes our physical as well as our cognitive capabilities and limitations. Human factors is otherwise called ergonomics, which we often associate with making products that fit our physical characteristics (e.g. a comfortable chair). Cognitive ergonomics considers how devices or systems also interact with our mental processes, including our memory, emotions, perception and decision-making. Optimizing the human factors of a system or piece of equipment can improve a user s well-being and performance and so is an essential consideration in product and experience design. Human factors and virtual reality: Virtual reality (VR) is an entirely new medium that delivers information to our senses and responds to our actions at a level of immersion unmatched in other forms of media. Though devices like TVs and PCs deliver information to our senses and tablets and game consoles allow us to interact with media through our motor system, none of these media go so far as to mimic the experiences we have in real life. Using features such as a wide field of view, 3D stereoscopic displays, head and body tracking, positional audio and haptics, VR is able to trick our brain and make users feel like they have actually been teleported into a new world. With this new and transformative technology come new considerations in human factors that need to be addressed. For example, though the technology has advanced significantly over the past few years, there are still considerable perceptual conflicts in VR that in some cases can cause simulator (SIM) sickness, which has symptoms and causes similar to motion sickness. The physical ergonomics of VR headsets and peripherals need to be assessed as they are developed. VR also has the potential to deeply affect our cognition, emotion and physiology significantly just as experiences in our real life can. 5

7 Related Companies YouVisit YouVisit is inspired by the desire to experience the wonder and beauty of the world, and the adventures that exist throughout. Our mission is to make those experiences accessible to as many people as possible, spark curiosity, inspire exploration, and create a sense of global citizenship. As the global leader in VR, YouVisit has one of the world's largest collections of interactive VR content. Individual users can easily create, share, and enjoy VR content on their VR headsets, mobile devices, and desktops. For businesses and institutions, we combine the power of our scalable VR platform with our professional production services to create customized VR experiences that add prominence to our partners sales and marketing efforts, boosting engagement, generating qualified leads, and increasing conversion rates. For more information, visit Ease VR Ease VR is a purpose-built analytics platform for digital realities. It has the ability to Capture, Measure and Analyze Human Experiences in VR environments. We have three major buckets of information which we capture, measure and analyze. These buckets are: 1. Core performance analytics - All metrics which are important for the developer to understand - FPS, Session length, time, HMD, Environment. Crashes etc 2. Engagement analytics - User Journey, Object Tracking, Event Tracking etc. 3. Human factors - Did the user fall sick? Was the user comfortable? Developers of digital reality experiences can easily embed our free marker technology or integrate our free public APIs. Once the markers or collectors are in place, the data is displayed, analyzed and acted upon, using our mobile-first dashboard. Ease VR allows developers to understand and automatically react to human behavior. For more information, visit Greenlight VR Greenlight VR is the industry leader in research and advice for the global virtual reality economy. Fortune 100 brands, global technology companies and leading investors rely on Greenlight VR to make smarter strategic decisions. The company tracks more virtual and augmented reality companies than any other research firm to date, Greenlight VR has collected millions of data points on thousands of companies. For more information, visit 6