Simone Grassini will defend his doctoral thesis “Sense of presence in immersive virtual environments: Measures, associations, and possible applied uses” on May 21, 2021 at 13:30.
The Faculty of Social and Educational Sciences, NTNU has appointed the following committee to evaluate the thesis:
- Professor Thomas Stoffregen, University of Minnesota, USA
- Dr. Anne-Marie Brouwer, the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research
- Professor Ingvild Saksvik-Lehouillier, NTNU
The candidate’s main supervisor has been Professor Karin Laumann, NTNU. The candidate’s co-supervisor has been Professor Magne Arve Flaten, NTNU.
Summary:
Investigating user experience during the use of immersive visual technology is important, especially in an historical period where various forms of virtual reality are being increasingly adopted by the public. From the traditional use in driving/flying simulators, gaming, and within entertainment industry, immersive visual technologies have gained spaces in academic research, education, safety training, work, and organizational settings, and for medical applications.
The doctoral work had the general goal to investigate the psychological phenomenon of sense of presence in the context of modern immersive visual technologies. Sense of presence – the feeling of “being there” (in a virtual environment) – is believed to be one of the most important factors in shaping user experience during the use of immersive visual technologies. The user experienced sense of presence has been linked by previous research to several important qualities of the technology, as for example, user performance and skill transfer in training. However, sense of presence is a challenging psychological construct to operationalize and measure.
The present work investigated possible methods to measure sense of presence during a virtual reality experience, as well as exploring user and system factors that may be important to shape the sense of presence of the users, and possible applied uses in which sense of presence could be used as predictor. The empirical work that has been reported was focused on understanding user experience during the use of the latest generation head-mounted displays.
The findings of the present doctoral work will be important to help the development of future virtual reality systems and understand technological possibilities, taking into consideration the human experience of presence and related factors. Furthermore, the present project has contributed to the understanding of important core factors that may be important for the adoption of immersive visual technologies.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 764951.