Exploring the Role of UX Influencing Factors in Virtual Reality for Natural Hazards Prepardness: A Disign-Based Approach
Doctoral thesis
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3126603Utgivelsesdato
2024Metadata
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Sammendrag
Climate change is one of the major challenges of our time, and its complexity makes finding innovative solutions challenging. One of the ways that climate change poses a challenge is by reshaping the earth’s natural ecosystem and increasing the frequency and severity of Natural Hazards (NH), such as floods and landslides, that affect millions of people and cause substantial losses. One potential solution is to leverage digital transformation and explore the use of narratives and immersive media technologies, such as virtual reality (VR), to communicate scientific information about NH and enable change. However, traditional methods of communication, such as reports and maps, may not be sufficient or accessible to a broader audience. Therefore, there is a need to develop transformative and immersive experiences that can facilitate the comprehension and communication of scientific information about NH.
This research project created immersive and engaging Virtual Reality Environments (VRE) that communicated NH using digital transformation technology as part of an interdisciplinary project called World of Wild Waters (WoWW). VR offered a unique opportunity to create digital twins of NH by integrating numerical simulations of geophysical phenomena that users could explore and manipulate. However, to create engaging VR, it was crucial to explore the factors that influenced User Experience (UX) within VR.
To address this challenge, the work adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach, which consisted of three iterative cycles, each addressing a specific objective. DBR Cycle 1 explored the factors that could enhance user-perceived quality in Immersive Media Experiences (IME). A conceptual framework was formulated by integrating Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) as an important dimension to be investigated in VR. Based on the proposed framework, a case study was designed to explore the role of IDN and its impact on UX in VR.
DBR Cycle 2 evaluated the impact of affordances on user-perceived experiences in VR. It developed a VR that integrated wayfinding cues as affordances for NH preparedness. The VR prototype implemented three VREs with several types of wayfinding cues: no cues, static cues, and dynamic cues, and it evaluated the psychological and psychometric effects of wayfinding cues on UX within the VR.
DBR Cycle 3 designed and evaluated a VR framework for visualizing numerical simulations of geophysical flows (i.e., floods) to enhance risk communication of NH in VR. We implemented a VR prototype that used the VR framework to visualize and interact with simulations of NH. Furthermore, DBR cycle 3 evaluated the influence of emotions and identity on UX in VR. The research demonstrated the novelty and originality of using VR to enhance the understanding and communication of NH and foster risk awareness and resilience among diverse audiences and stakeholders.
The results showed how UX influencing factors such as IDN, affordances, emotions, and identity enhanced the VR experience, thus contributing to the advancement of knowledge and practice in the fields of VR, UX, and NH. Moreover, this research provided insights and guidelines for creating effective and engaging VR for communicating complex and uncertain scientific information about NH.
Består av
Paper 1: Hameed, Asim; Irshad, Shafaq; Perkis, Andrew. Towards a Quality Framework for Immersive Media Experiences: A Holistic Approach. I: 12th International Conference on Interactive Digital Storytelling, ICIDS 2019.. Springer Nature 2019 ISBN 978-3-030-33893-0. s. 389-394. Copyright © 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33894-7_41Paper 2: Irshad, Shafaq; Perkis, Andrew. Increasing User Engagement in Virtual Reality:The Role of Interactive Digital Narratives to Trigger Emotional Responses. I: NordiCHI '20: Shaping Experiences, Shaping Society, Proceedings of the 11th Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2020 ISBN 978-1-4503-7579-5. s. -Published by: ACM. © 2020 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3419249.3421246
Paper 3: Irshad, Shafaq; Perkis, Andrew. Serious Storytelling in Virtual Reality: The Role of Digital Narrative to Trigger Mediated Presence and Behavioral Responses. Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) 2020 (ISBN 978-1-4503-7587-0) 5 s. Copyright © 2020 Association for Computing Machinery. This paper is not included due to copyright restrictions. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3383668.3419908
Paper 4: Irshad, Shafaq; Perkis, Andrew; Azam, Waleed. Wayfinding in virtual reality serious game: An exploratory study in the context of user perceived experiences. Applied Sciences 2021 ;Volum 11.(17). s. – Published by MDPI. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/app11177822
Paper 5: Irshad, Shafaq. Investigating the user experience of IDN based virtual reality environments for solving complex issues. New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia 2022 s. - Published by Informa UK Limited. © 2022 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License. CC BY-NC-ND. Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13614568.2022.2150325
Paper 6: Irshad, Shafaq; Perkis, Andrew et al. Interactive Narrative Design for Representing Complexity. Available at: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2305.01925
Paper 7: Alene , Gebray H.; Irshad, Shafaq; Moraru, Adina; Depina, Ivan; Bruland, Oddbjørn; Perkis, Andrew; Thakur, Vikas. Virtual Reality Visualization of Geophysical Flows: A framework. This paper has been submitted for publication and is therefore not included.
Paper 8: Irshad, Shafaq; Lai, Amanda Elizabeth; Alene, Gebray Habtu; Moraru, Adina; Krupicka, Adam; Kapellmann-Zafra, Gabriel; Perkis, Andrew, Bruland, Oddbjørn; Kløckner, Christian A. Beyond Presence: Understanding the Role of Identity and Emotions in Virtual Reality for Natural Hazards Preparedness. This paper has been submitted for publication and is therefore not included.