Evaluating Presence for Customer Experience in a Virtual Environment: Using a Nuclear Power Plant as an Example

Abstract

In contrast to experiences offered by traditional media, this study used a three‐dimensional virtual environment to evaluate customer experiences. The aims of this study were twofold: first, to investigate whether virtual interaction can impress customers in a visual or auditory sense and thereby further induce “presence”; and second, to understand how to provide a better sense of presence by using virtual interactions. This study used a nuclear power plant control room to construct virtual customer experience patterns. The results of the questionnaire showed no statistical significance, except for one question: “How responsive was the environment to actions that you initiated (or performed)?” During the experience, interactively receiving information in the active model offered a more significant sense of presence. For the physiological measurement, we used the multiscale entropy of complexity to analyze the heart rate. The complexity index for the active model proved significantly larger than for the passive, indicating better adaptability to the active model.

A Comparative Study of Sense of Presence of Virtual Reality and Immersive Environments

“…One way to measure presence is to observe how people physically react to stimulation; we can call this behavioral presence (Witmer and Singer, 1998;Zeltzer, 1992;Meehan et al, 2002;Ijsselsteijn et al, 2002;North, 2002;Riva et al, 2007;Lee, Chou & Sun, 2015). Behavioral presence focused mainly on the movements of the subjects and on spontaneous speech.…”

“…To properly measure presence, several questionnaires have been suggested Lombard & Ditton, 1997;Sheridan, 1996;Slater et al, 1994;Slater, 1999;June et al, 2009;North et al, 2002;Lin et al, 2002;Lee et al, 2015). Based on the research briefly described above, particularly the questionnaire originally developed by Slater et al (1994), questionnaires that measured subjective self-reports were administered immediately after the completion of the simulation sessions for both IVE and TVRE experiments.…”

“…The first type is the comparison of extreme opposites, like CAVE (Cave Automatic Virtual Environment, an immersive virtual reality with projectors are pointed to between three and six walls of a room-sized cube) and standard desktop computers (Gruchalla, 2004;Shim & Kim, 2004;Juan & Perez, 2009). The second type refers to studies that utilize external factors such as field-of-view, stereoscopy, headtracking, sounds, and augmentation (Hendrix & Barfield, 1995;Waterworth & Waterworth, 2003;Juan, Calatrava, 2011;North & North, 2002;Arino et al, 2014;Lee, Chou & Sun, 2015). The design of this empirical research methodology is primarily based on this second class of comparisons, incorporating limited features from the first type.…”

Effects of three‐dimensional virtual reality and traditional training methods on mental workload and training performance

“…() found that the doctors who have been trained using the VR system apparently had better‐quality surgery skills. VR technology has also been widely utilized in trainings for design, manufacturing, transportation, military, and nuclear power plant (Chaffin, ; Chung, Shewchuk, & Williges, ; Duarte et al., ; Fuhua, Duffy, & Su, ; Hue, Delannay, & Berland, ; Lee, Chou, & Sun, ; Nathanael, Mosialos, Vosniakos, & Tsagkas, ; Vilar, Rebelo, F., & Noriega, 2016; Wu, Mu, Yang, & Gu, ). Instead of the effects of VR on mental workload (MWL), applications of VR have often focused on training performance.…”