Beyond the Headset: Towards a Practical Integrative Framework for Measuring User Experience in Immersive Virtual Reality Environments
Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) as a simulation medium holds significant potential in health, education, training, and product development. However, its widespread adoption is hindered by challenges in usability, accessibility, and the lack of standardized methods for evaluating user experience (UX). Measuring UX in VR is complex due to spatial interactions, diverse user abilities, and the absence of reliable tools, leading to issues with replicability.This paper proposes an integrative research framework designed to address these challenges by introducing an open-source VR assessment tool for collecting subjective measurements through questionnaires directly in VR. Supported by comprehensive onboarding guidelines and a VR user ability model, the framework aims to increase reliability by minimizing interruptions to the experience and contextualizing user interactions based on individual abilities.An iterative, user-centered design methodology was employed, involving transdisciplinary collaboration between software engineering and life sciences. The framework was evaluated through three detailed case studies across different domains, involving diverse participants in terms of age, technological affinity, and prior VR experience. Findings suggest a practical, accessible tool that maintains high usability across applications, supported by onboarding guidelines that enhance participant comfort and study procedure.The proposed framework democratizes VR UX research by enabling experts from non-technical fields to conduct reliable studies with diverse participant groups. By enhancing replicability and reproducibility, it advances VR as a robust research medium, facilitating broader adoption and fostering innovation across multiple domains.
This preprint is available Open-Access at the publisher.