"I Shot the Interviewer!": The Effects of In-VR Interviews on Participant Feedback and Rapport

Title of the Paper

“I Shot the Interviewer!”: The Effects of In-VR Interviews on Participant Feedback, Presence, and Rapport

Paper Information

• Subject Area: Design and evaluation of user interviews in Virtual Reality (VR)
• Keywords: Virtual Reality, Interviews, Qualitative Methods, Questionnaire Evaluation, Presence, Interactive Experience, Remote Research, Psychological Involvement, User Research

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  1. Traditional VR evaluations require users to remove their head-mounted displays, which may cause "breaks in presence," affecting the reliability of evaluation results.
  2. Exiting the real and virtual environments may lead to user disorientation and data bias, but research on "qualitative interviews" within virtual environments remains relatively scarce.
  3. Further exploration is needed to determine whether user-interviewer interaction in virtual environments affects feedback quality and rapport.

• Significance:

  1. The rapid development of VR technology and immersive experiences makes optimal user research methods critical.
  2. Preserving users' sense of immersion in VR can enhance data quality.
  3. With the increasing demand for remote research, virtual interviews offer a potential solution to geographical constraints.

• Research Motivation and Related Work:

  1. Existing research primarily focuses on technical methods for completing questionnaires in VR (e.g., avoiding issues caused by exiting VR), but there is insufficient exploration of interview modes within virtual environments (e.g., whether the interviewer has a visual representation or interactions inside and outside the head-mounted display).
  2. Related studies suggest that visual anonymity may encourage more candid feedback but also reduce rapport-building during interviews.

Solution

• Proposed Method:

  1. Design an experiment based on three interview conditions:
     • Face-to-face interviews
     • Users wearing head-mounted displays with the interviewer lacking a virtual representation (Immersed)
     • Users and interviewers interacting through avatars within a virtual environment
  2. Use a deliberately flawed VR shooting game as the test medium to analyze user feedback under different interview modes.

• Innovations:

  1. Establish a baseline for the impact of interviewer-avatar interaction on user feedback in virtual interview modes.
  2. Explore how the presentation of the interviewer (physical presence or virtual introduction) affects dimensions such as "psychological involvement" and user candidness.

• Implementation Steps:

  1. Limit user gameplay to a uniform duration of 70 seconds (making failure or early completion unlikely) to ensure a consistent experience.
  2. Randomly assign users to interviews under the three conditions afterward.
  3. Conduct questionnaires to measure their sense of presence, psychological involvement, rapport with the interviewer, and feedback on the game.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:

  1. Presence: The three interview modes showed no significant differences in overall presence, but face-to-face conditions had an advantage in the "realness" dimension.
  2. Psychological Involvement: The Avatar condition and face-to-face interviews demonstrated significantly higher psychological involvement compared to the Immersed condition.
  3. User Feedback: Critical feedback was slightly higher under the Immersed condition, while the Avatar condition elicited generally positive attitudes toward the interview process.
  4. Impact of Familiarity: Users' familiarity with the interviewer significantly influenced their sense of presence, game ratings, and expressions of positive emotions.

• Advantages Compared to Existing Solutions:

  1. Interviews conducted in virtual environments avoid the "interruption effect" caused by users exiting VR.
  2. Interview formats using avatars enhance "psychological connection," effectively replicating the diversity of face-to-face interactions.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  1. The relationship formed between participants and interviewers significantly influenced the positive or negative trends in feedback.
  2. Avatar-based interview models balanced the advantages of remote accessibility and interactive presence, with participants generally exhibiting a more humorous and relaxed attitude.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  1. Interviewer Performance Impact: The experiment deployed only one interviewer; future studies should investigate how variations in interviewer personality or avatar appearance affect response outcomes.
  2. Lack of Long-Term Research: The short duration of interviews in this experiment was insufficient to observe the full cycle of rapport-building.
  3. Research Expansion: Potential applications in areas such as sensitive topic research or remote education could be explored further.
  4. Improvement of Sentiment Analysis Tools: Future efforts could focus on developing sentiment analysis models optimized for VR gaming contexts.

Through this study, the authors propose the feasibility of conducting interviews in virtual spaces using avatars, providing valuable insights for improving user research in VR and enhancing VR interaction experiences.