Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 2.
The virtual room and characters. (a)The physical objects (b) User inside the CAVE (c)
VR door with interactive doorknob (d) White Rabbit in the Garden
3.2
Procedure and Participants
The participants were invited to take part of the “Alice's Adventures in Wonderland”
and they were led into the room with the instruction to “have fun”. They experienced
one of the following interaction modes:
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Interactive environment (IE): The environment used all the available interaction
features described in the interaction design section, based on the behavior of the
user.
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Non-interactive environment (NIE): A pre-programmed scenario (that uses 10
from the described features) of the narrative is played without taking in
consideration the behavior of the user.
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Non-interactive with minimum stimuli (NIMS): A pre-programmed scenario (that
uses 4 features) of the narrative is played without taking in consideration the
behavior of the user.
Forty-one participants joined the study, all university students from 18 to 33 years old
(13 female, 28 male, mean age 23 with a standard deviation of 3). Twelve participants
joined the IE setting; sixteen joined the NIE and thirteen the NIMS setting. All
experimental sessions took less than 20 minutes including the experience about 4
minutes and a survey about 15 minutes.
3.3
Measurements
Presence.
Participants were administered with the ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory
(ITC-SOPI) to evaluate their levels of physical presence [7]. The ITCSOPI is a
validated 44-item self-report questionnaire that was used in this study to measure how
physically present and involved the users feel in the storytelling environment through
four factors: spatial presence, engagement, ecological validity and negative effects.
Agency.
We measured the subjectively perceived agency based on the perceived
proficiency, the perceived responsiveness and technical aspects of the environment
and how much the participants are aware of their influence on the events in the
environment. The following items were created:
“I felt proficient in my actions with
the environment during the experience”, “I was aware of my influence on control
mechanisms in the environment”, “I felt that the environment was responsive to my
