The influence of a sign system on the sense of presence in a desktop virtual environment

✍ Scribed by Gilok Choi; Hsin-liang Chen

• Publisher: Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 20 KB
• Volume: 43
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0044-7870
• DOI: 10.1002/meet.14504301258

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

In a virtual world, users experience compelling illusions, allowing them to become a part of an electronically generated environment. In the world of Virtual Environments, presence refers to such compelling sense of being in a computer generated environment. In spite of the importance of users' perceptual experience, however, only limited consideration has been given to the experiences users encounter when interacting with the virtual interface. This research is therefore to investigate the impact of interface design on the sense of presence. In particular, this study attempts to examine whether the degrees of presence are enhanced by navigational affordances supported by a sign system.

A controlled experiment with between‐subject factorial design will be conducted to examine the effects of a sign system on users' perceptual experience. Forty participants will be asked to accomplish two sets of seven comparable tasks (total 14 tasks) with and without a help of signs. Upon completion, participants will be asked to complete a post‐test questionnaire on the sense of presence on 1‐to‐7 Likert type scales. For the two sessions of trial, two virtual universities were constructed with ActiveWorlds (http://www.activeworlds.com). ANOVA repeated measure and correlation analysis will be used for the data analysis.