User Experience Evaluation of a Physical versus Virtual Product: An Exploratory Study Using Immersive Virtual Reality

Recently, it has been proposed that virtual reality (VR) could be used as a tool to assess user experience (UX) of a product. However, to our best knowledge, no research has yet compared physical and virtual UX evaluations. To address this issue, we assessed the UX of a product (a "Graziella" bicycle) in a physical and a virtual setting. In the physical condition, participants evaluated the physical product, whereas in the VR condition they evaluated the virtual simulation of the same product using a head-mounted display. The evaluation in the simulated condition was performed using two different social VR platforms: Amazon Sumerian (N=14) or Sansar by Linden Lab (N=21). The Object Presence Questionnaire (OPQ) was administered to evaluate the perceived presence of the product, while the ITC-Sense of Presence Inventory (ITC-SOPI) was used to assess personal presence. In addition, the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) was administered to evaluate participants' emotional response. The analysis of OPQ data revealed that neither object presence, nor personal presence was influenced by presentation condition (i.e., physical or virtual) and no significant difference was also found between the VR platforms. The analysis of ITC-SOPI indicated that levels of subscale Engagement were higher in the virtual than in the physical model, with no differences between the two VR platforms. PANAS results showed that the virtual condition was characterized by significantly higher positive affect than the physical one, again with no difference found between the VR platforms. Results suggest that the evaluation of a product in an immersive setting produces comparable results in terms of perceptual realism and perceived presence with the evaluation of a physical product. Furthermore, the virtual UX assessment task elicited engagement and positive affect, suggesting the potential of VR as a tool to assist designers in the evaluation of a product's UX.