Comparative analysis of user experience in virtual photographic-based presence platform

PubDate: November 2015

Teams: Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México

Writers: Héctor H. Huipet Hernández；Víctor M. González

PDF: Comparative analysis of user experience in virtual photographic-based presence platform

Abstract

Nowadays, virtual photographic-based presence systems such as Google Street View (GSV) have the potential of offering experiences that allow users to virtually travel to any place in the world with a level of realism that mimics the entire context of the setting with a 360-degree photographic mosaic. Despite the novelty and value of such systems given the effort required to generate them is still not clear how much of the real experience can be replicated and in general what are the unique characteristics defining the user experience it creates. Among other things one wonders about, what are the aspects of a real experience that can be replicated in a virtual environment? Is it possible to achieve a sense of presence, immersion or flow with this approach? We conducted a comparative analysis between the real and virtual traversing of an urban zone, where 32 participants conducted a series of tasks and solved questionnaires that tried to address the previous questions. It was found that the sense of presence, immersion and flow is better on the real environment experience, however the correlations between presence, immersion and flow were stronger in the virtual world. The sense of direction was not a relevant side factor for any of the measures. Technical limitations of GSV and speed of interaction and bandwidth were key factors that can be improved in order to achieve better sensing in the virtual world.