How does UX design match with virtual reality to affect the success in UX of video gaming?

Cynthia Chong

Research Goal

Evaluates how UI and UX play an important role in game satisfaction and impact the user experience in virtual reality

Changes in performances, emotions, and behaviors when the users are shifting from traditional screen to virtual reality

The gameplay user experience (GX) in virtual reality V.S traditional

What is Virtual Reality (VR)?

• Immersive technology that offers a real-time three-dimensional virtual environment (VE) for users • Enriched by graphics, audio, and user feedback • The screen for video gaming

head-mounted display (HMD)

• Keep track of the users’ head motion in the fictional world

Oculus Rift

HTC Vive

Current Trend of Virtual Reality: Sales

The sales of the VR headsets: exceeded over 6 million units (2017)

The sales of VR games: from 1,000 - 50,000 (2017)

Over 30.4 billion dollars has been spent on video games (2017)

Reason of the significant figures of sales: the first commercial released of VR in 2016

About 16% of video games support VR, and 83% of those video games required a VR headset in order to play

Current Trend of Virtual Reality: Target Users

65% of U.S. households had at least one family member play video games regularly

67% of them are willing to buy a decent game console

63% of video game players were male

The average age is 35

Impact of User Experience in Virtual Reality • The UX elements presented in VR : • User's emotional response • Physiological behaviors during the interaction

• The UI elements presented in VR : • • • •

User interaction Immersion (sensory and full body) Simulation (visual, acoustic, and haptic) Visualization (making information visualize)

Methodology Used to Evaluate GX in VR • Playtesting • Ask for user feedback with questionnaires • Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (GUESS) • Examine the user gaming satisfaction in different aspects • Description of each subscale • Reprinted from “The Development and Validation of the Game User Experience Satisfaction Scale (Guess),” by M.H. Plan, J.R. Keebler, and B.S. Chaparro, 2016 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

Gameplay User Satisfaction Comparison • Video game testing with VR headsets generated a higher satisfaction score compared to a traditional computer monitor • VR headsets have higher engrossment, enjoyment, creative freedom, and better visual and audio aesthetic • Subscales of the GUESS comparing an Oculus Rift VR headset and a traditional monitor

• Reprinted from “Gaming on the Rift: How Virtual Reality Affects Game User Satisfaction.” by Shelstad, William and Smith, Dustin and Chaparro, Barbara, 2017 by Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting. 61.

Limitations in Virtual Reality

Demographics

Technology

Physical

Not everyone has opportunity to experience or even hear of VR yet

The cost of the VR headset affect the quality of the user research

VE could arouse physical sicknesses, such as cybersickness (CS), simulator sickness (SS), and motion sickness (MS)

Gender differences could affect the testing results due to their psychology and physical discrepancies

The technical issues like motion delay or low-quality screen display would be harmful to the testing results

All of these sicknesses may occur after participating in VR, and negatively affect the emotions and performance of players

Conclusion • The design of UI and UX in VR is strongly associated with each other • Great evaluation elements to examine the GX: virtual environment, user’s self-report satisfaction level, and the VR context • The designed task or controlled environment based on real-world settings help researchers explore interesting findings from VR • It is essential to conduct playtesting to evaluate the impact of user experience in VR!

Future Study • Challenging for the researchers to solve the problems • Some limitations are identified as natural responses of human beings

• Alternative applications can integrate with VR to destress the issues • Through HCI researches and studies, a fixed methodology framework may help improve the UI and UX of VR