Investigating Effects and User Preferences of Extra- and Intradiegetic Virtual Reality Questionnaires

ABSTRACT Virtual realities (VR) are becoming an integral part of product development across many industries, for example to assess aesthetics and usability of new features in the automotive industry. The recording of the evaluation is typically conducted by filling out questionnaires after the study participants left the virtual environment. In this paper, we investigate how questionnaires can be best embedded within the virtual environment and compare how VR-questionnaires differ from classical post-test evaluations regarding preference, presence, and questionnaire completion time. In the first study (N = 11), experts rated four design concepts of questionnaires embedded in VR, of which two were designed as extradiegetic and two as intradiegetic user interfaces. We show that intradiegetic UIs have a significantly higher perceived user experience and presence while the usability remains similar. Intradiegetic UIs are preferred by the majority. Based on these findings, we compared intradiegetic VR-questionnaires with paper-based evaluations in a follow up study (N = 24). 67% of the participants preferred the evaluation in VR, even though it takes significantly longer. We found no effect on presence.