Measuring immersion in virtual reality: leveraging linkography for evaluation

This study investigates the potential of using Linkography, a method traditionally applied to evaluate creativity in design collaboration, to evaluate participants’ sense of immersion in virtual reality (VR) animation. Given the lack of prior research applying Linkography to VR environments, we replicated the methodology of Nielsen et al. (2016. “Missing the Point: An Exploration of How to Guide Users’ Attention During Cinematic Virtual Reality.” In Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Conference on Virtual Reality Software and Technology, 229–232), which evaluated the effectiveness of three visual guidance methods in VR animations. Similarly, in our experiment, participants watched animations with the same three types of visual guidance and completed both questionnaires and Linkography diagrams to capture their responses. In this experiment, we used the Visual Guidance in VR (VGVR) questionnaire, which was designed to measure both immersion and the effectiveness of visual guidance, incorporating items from the Slater-Usoh-Steed (SUS) model and the Aesthetic Experience Questionnaire (AEQ). Finally, we compared the VGVR questionnaire scores and Linkography entropy values from our experiment with those from Nielsen's study. The study demonstrated that Linkography can be a viable tool for assessing immersion in VR experiences, particularly when combined with traditional questionnaires. Additionally, the results showed that different visual guidance methods impacted participants’ immersion, with the Object (firefly) to Follow guidance yielding the highest scores.