How Interaction Paradigms Affect User Experience and Perceived Interactivity in Virtual Reality Environment

Interactivity is one of the major features of virtual reality (VR) comparing with traditional digital devices. Many virtual reality devices and applications provide more than one input instruments for users to experience VR content. This study compares user behavior and perceived interactivity with three interaction paradigms to investigate the influence of interaction paradigms on user experience in virtual environment. An experiment of 36 participants was conducted to measure three factors of user experience and three factors of perceived interactivity. An ANOVA test was conducted and the results show that interaction paradigms have significant influence on user total interaction frequency, playfulness of interactivity and controllability of interactivity. Results did not show significant difference on total experience time between groups, which indicates that how long time the users spent in experiencing VR were not significantly affected by what type of interaction paradigms they used. This study has theoretical and practical implications on designing and developing virtual reality user experience.