Effects of Gender and Prior Experience in Immersive User Experience with Virtual Reality

Abstract : The purpose of this paper is to study the effect of gender and prior experience with virtual reality (VR) on Immersive User Experience. We propose to use IUX to describe user experience with immersive technologies. IUX includes traditional component of UX (i.e., pragmatic quality and hedonic qualities identification and stimulation) as well as components specific to VR (i.e., presence and cybersickness). We conducted an experiment with 52 students, asking them to perform an aeronautical assembly task in VR. Results show that gender has an effect on two subscales of presence - self-assessment of performance and ability to act - and on hedonic quality stimulation. Prior experience with VR has an effect on self-assessment of performance, pragmatic quality and hedonic quality stimulation. Gender and prior experience with VR have an insignificant effect on cybersickness.