As it is the time of COVID-19, the tests had to be conducted at home with family and friends that fall under our bubble.
We did have a look at the prospect of how it can be done in a university environment and had done an induction that went through the right way of doing it with the right safety in place. Already when doing this test, the users would have to be given the general introduction on how a VR headset would work.
What the particular controls would be (in our case, the controls of an Oculus headset along with the Oculus controller), but for the university set up, there were many other aspects to go through for safety, eg: Not being able to share headsets one by one because of the need to quarantine them and not being able to wipe down electronic devices (so individual headsets to be provided for each participants) to keeping right distance between all.
In the end, we ended up not doing the experiments in the university space but stuck to doing it at home within our bubbles. Nonetheless, the users were given consent forms to sign before each iteration and COVID-19 protection measures were taken.
Iteration 1 had the form of an A-B-C testing.
The participants were given instructions on how the interaction of teleportation and of grabbing objects worked.
The galleries were given to the participants in random order each time.
In the end the users were emailed a questionnaire to fill in.
There were 11 participants for this test.
The overall duration of the study was 30’.
The questionnaire focused on the user friendliness of the experience, on navigating & interacting in the experience, and on their opinions and preferences for each different layout.
The study gathered 11 participants.
It should be noted that gallery C could not be played in VR for technical reasons and the participants navigated through the gallery on the PC via keyboard. Of course this factor skewed the results of the questionnaire and we took that into account.
Additionally, one of the participants was tested over media platforms and not directly due to COVID rules in that time (eg: UK did not allow anyone outside of the household to visit for the duration of Iteration 1 testing).
Iteration 2 consisted of three parts.
In the first part the participant is given a VR headset where they were introduced to the experience. They then proceed to the AR application where they pick up trash virtually, and finally swap to VR and place artefacts into a gallery.
For the second part of the study the participants are emailed and are called to complete a questionnaire.
There were 4 participants for this test.
The overall duration of the study was 45’.
To make sure that the study was conducted impartially we set up the testing space so that the participants had enough space to pick up trash in the AR part.
The testing space was the same for each participant.
The questionnaire focused on the user friendliness of the AR application, on the interruption of focus of the participant and of the narrative of the experience due to the switches from VR to AR to VR, and on their general opinion of this cross platform experience.