Transformative Realities: Unleashing the Potential of Virtual Reality for Enhancing Usability and Behavioural Change
[emg] this thesis, we have explored how to enhance the usability, applicability, and practical implications of Immersive Virtual Reality by considering the challenges and opportunities associated with this technology. The thesis encompassed various domains from a multidisciplinary perspective to inv...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2024 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/211600 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/211600 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/690915 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Realitat virtual Simulació per ordinador Usabilitat (Disseny de sistemes) Hàbit de fumar Realitat augmentada Virtual reality Computer simulation User-centered system design Smoking Augmented reality |
| Sumario: | [emg] this thesis, we have explored how to enhance the usability, applicability, and practical implications of Immersive Virtual Reality by considering the challenges and opportunities associated with this technology. The thesis encompassed various domains from a multidisciplinary perspective to investigate these topics and advance the knowledge in the field. The research areas included addressing the usability aspect to provide solutions for simulator sickness in VR, investigating the relationship between embodiment and gradual changes in the light of the change blindness phenomenon to expand our understanding of their applicability in VR, and finally, exploring the practical, real-life applications of VR self-counselling through different virtual body representations in the context of personal problems and nicotine dependence. Our research first addressed the significant technical challenge of simulator sickness, which is still prevalent in virtual reality systems. In Simulator Sickness Experiments, we found that altering the lighting parameter within a virtual environment could significantly mitigate simulator sickness by allowing faster movement, presenting a simple solution for future virtual environment design. Building on prior knowledge, our results showed that introducing a darker light at the beginning of the VR scenario could lead to faster movements of participants by enhancing the VR's overall usability and participant experience. Subsequently, we extended our investigation to the embodiment, a fundamental aspect of immersive VR. In the Qigong Experiment, we focused on the issue of change blindness - a phenomenon where alterations in visual stimuli go unnoticed by the observer. This relationship is studied in a VR scenario of a Qigong training session, during which the participant's and the instructor's virtual bodies underwent gradual but profound transformations. Our findings revealed that these changes in the instructor body essentially went unnoticed by most participants, providing insights into the applicability of the intriguing intersection of these two phenomena for VR applications. iv Moving forward, we investigated and exploited a paradigm for VR self-conversation, a method previously used to help change perspectives on personal problems. In Self-Dialogue with a Virtual Future Self Experiments, we considered the potential of VR self-counselling by comparing different counsellor representations to alleviate personal problems and its potential application in nicotine addiction research. Our first study, which compared lookalike, future, and generic counsellor representations in self-conversations about a personal problem, showed that a generic, gender-matched virtual body as the counsellor representation significantly improved psychological outcomes. In our second study that investigated VR self-conversation for nicotine dependence, we adopted a perspective that used the future self-continuity approach with VR self-counselling, enabling participants to have a self-conversation with smoker and non-smoker versions of their future selves, and compared these representations with their lookalike counsellor representation. Our results revealed considerable differences in pre-VR and post-VR behavioural nicotine dependence measures when the counsellor was depicted as a future self who continued to smoke. This thesis investigated technical challenges and the usability of VR technology, offered new insights into the embodiment and change blindness, and expanded knowledge on the applications of VR self-conversation in dealing with personal and addiction-related issues. Overall, the transformative potential of VR was explored through multiple facets of VR, starting from a technical challenge, and moving to practical applications that demonstrated how immersive VR can lead to behavioural change. |
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