The effect of designed dramatic interaction on mobile virtual reality usability

Larsen, Jon Byrdal ; Nørlem, Mads Luther

4. term

Medialogy, Master

2018

2018-05-28

34 pages

Conveying information about cultural heritage to the public is something that is continuously being expanded upon, where institutions like museums are showing great interest in utilising new technologies to assist in doing so, as they at the same time feel a need to modernise. Various cultural heritage sites and museum exhibits suffer from insufficient means of representing them. This can both be due to lack of actual items to present, or difficulties or expenses in presenting them in the context of cultural heritage sites. Models, both physical and digital, are typically used as means of presenting cultural heritage sites. Virtual reality has the potential to be a technology capable of informing and engaging museums visitors in ways that typically would not be possible. However, as a majority of visitors at museums typically are seniors who may be struggling with various impairments, which, along with their decreased familiarity with technology, requires whatever system is being made, to be designed and developed with them in mind. This report describes the development and evaluation of a system meant to visualize an old Celtic Iron Age fortress through the use of mobile virtual reality. Two variations of the system were made, one making use of dramatic interaction through the use of a virtual companion as a means of guiding the user around and having them interact with the system, where the other is a more traditional “point and click” setup with a head-controlled cursor. The system was developed in collaboration with Vesthimmerlands Museum. The two variations were evaluated on users representing the common visitors of the museums. This resulted in 22 seniors testing the two variations. Through the use of observations, questionnaires and logs on the phones, the usability and personal preference between the two variations were tested. From the evaluation, it was found that the usability was not statistically significantly different between the two variations. The preference between the two was, however, statistically significantly different, favoring the variation making use of dramatic interaction.

Virtual Reality ; Mobile Virtual Reality ; Cultural Heritage ; Dramatic Interaction ; Seniors ; Presence ; Usability ; Companion ; Google Cardboard ; Human Computer Interaction ; HCI

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