0000000000082449
AUTHOR
Petri Parvinen
Sociability in Virtual Reality
This study investigates sociability in the context of immersive Virtual Reality (VR). A Design Science Research process was applied, and three iterative development versions of a VR application were studied. Sociability around the technology was investigated with two theoretical perspectives: social presence and social interactions. The results of qualitative interviews and observations as well as a quantitative experiment are combined to make a proposal for four design principles enhancing the beneficial sociability of VR systems. These principles address the importance of ease-of-use and personalization in the activation of a customer, customer empowerment and emancipation through familia…
Enabling Sociability When Using Virtual Reality Applications : A Design Science Research Approach
Immersive virtual reality applications aim at providing an all-encompassing spatial experience where a user can feel like being in another world or dimension. The systems are inherently designed for individual use as the devices disconnect the user from the physical environment. However, the applications are seldom used alone. Specifically, when used for sales and marketing, the user often needs help from other people but also benefits from social interaction as a part of the experience. Design research methodology is applied to three iterative development versions of a virtual-reality application. The focus of the evaluation of the artifacts is in the social use emphasizing three sociabili…
Scaling Consultative Selling with Virtual Reality: Design and Evaluation of Digitally Enhanced Services
Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies allow creation of powerful customer experiences and illustrative demonstrations especially in use cases that benefit from spatial visualizations. Our study focuses on the natural resource management sector and digitalizing of consultative selling process. More specifically, we look at how to improve customer engagement with the use of virtual reality (VR) and thus digitally scale consultative selling. In this process, a VR application is used to demonstrate various management operations and their economic results. Design research methodology is applied to a pre-development phase and three application development iterations between 2016 and …
Problem Space Identification for Developing Virtual Reality Learning Environments
Our study argues that the extant literature on virtual reality-based learning environments (VRLEs) currently lacks proper definitions and context descriptions for a problem space, which is fundamental for conducting design science research (DSR). Without properly conducted problem space identification, the most pivotal problems cannot be identified resulting solutions lacking validity and unreliable evaluations. This is a major challenge for the DSR in the educational field, but also for the research on VRLEs. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a novel DSR method to support rigorous problem space identification, which would allow rigorous and profound problem space analysis. The inst…
Virtual reality as a recovering environment - Implications for design principles
In this study, a simulated, VR-based environment was built and analyzed to explore if a VR environment can possess recovering effects. 61 university students tested a VR application depicting a forest and answered survey questions about the experience. The results showed that VR-environment can indeed have recovering effects. Moreover, when comparing to previous studies in real forests, the recovery effects were at similar levels. The study results suggest that as the VR-based environments can possess recovery effects, they can work as recovery environments at schools or similar environments. The study results offer implications for the designers and propose design principles to build recov…
Applying Affordances Scale as a Design Method : Case Virtual Reality Course Design
Practitioners including designers and teachers developing Virtual Reality (VR) courses are facing a question regarding the strengths and subject areas in which VR-enriched courses might have the highest potential compared to conventional courses. The present study develops a survey scale to assess and match industry managers’ requirements for skills for working life. The same scale was surveyed among two different groups of higher education students participating in conventional courses and a VR-aided course. The results indicate that the industry requirements were higher than met by the both course types. However, the results highlight a set of skills for which the VR courses have the high…
The use of virtual reality as a potential restorative environment in school during recess
Publisher Copyright: © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved. Previous research has found out that simulated, Virtual Reality (VR)-based forests can bring equal or even higher restorative effects than real forests. In this study, a Virtual Reality (VR)-based forest was created in order to compare whether VR-based forest can possess restorative effects in the context of primary school, and how the possible effects compare to restorative effects of a normal recess or to a situation when there is no recess at all. The effects were measured using Restorative Outcome Scale (ROS) and problem-solving tasks after the intervention. The res…
Stakeholder Strategy and Design Alignment Framework for Design Science Research – A Study in the Context of VR-Aided Marketing and Sales
This study introduces a framework to align various perceptions and objectives that different stakeholders have at the beginning of a Design Science Research (DSR) process and consolidate them into stakeholders’ strategies and theory-ingrained design artifacts. We coin this framework as Stakeholder Strategy and Design Alignment (SSDA). As an application area, we concentrate on a Virtual Reality (VR) application designed for marketing and sales purposes. The empirical testing of the framework shows that the marketing and sales potential of the application are, indeed, perceived very differently among three stakeholder groups: company representatives, developers and customers. In addition to t…
Immersive Virtual Reality in Experiential Learning : A Value Co-creation and Co-destruction Approach
Immersive Virtual Reality (later VR) has its potential in enabling learning experiences. Several studies adopt experiential learning as a key concept to understand the outcomes of VR. This study consists of two parts – the first part conducts a systematic literature review on VR experiential learning and suggests seven main dimensions for the concept identified by the existing literature: engagement, sociability, contextual information, physical sensation, interactivity, cognitions, and presence. The second part adopts a value co-creation and co-destruction approach to empirically test the construction underlying VR experiential learning. The findings indicate 33 value co-creation and 19 va…