The Virtual Experience - Examining Visual, Auditory and Haptic Capabilities and Aspects of Spatial Cognition and User Experience in Virutal Reality
- The dissertation investigates different modal aspects in Virtual Reality and how they affect spatial cognition and UX in VR. VR makes it possible to examine things that would not be possible in the real world or would need a massive amount of effort to be examined in the real world. The first part of the dissertation takes a closer look on the visual aspects of orientation in buildings by varying different factors of the visual experience like landmarks and textures. The second part examines how auditory and vibrotactile feedback can affect performance in the search of invisible objects. The third part takes a closer look on designing a useable VR app with data gloves, used for learning and teaching in manual medicine, a haptic heavy environment. The dissertation ends with a general discussion of the different results in light of the current research and offers directions on what should be the goal to create meaningful, multimodal VR user experiences.