Influence of Visualisation Design of Data Streams on User Experience in Virtual Reality

Abstract

The continuous growth in technology has brought some revolutionary changes in various domains, resulting in considerable data accumulation. Although traditional segregation and displaying data might still be possible, it may be difficult for users to extract the quintessence from them. Data is one of the most practical terms, irrespective of its origin or time, and it does have an interesting story to convey. There is a need for the data to be presented more innovatively, so that obscure and complex data can be comprehended easily. Still, it all may come down to good storytelling in many cases and enabling people to connect with the data. With this research study, we leverage virtual reality concepts to compare two techniques to visualise data - traditionally numerical and creative. The aim is to bring data into virtual reality to help one interact and visualise data in a three-dimensional environment, thereby adding more fun and compelling ways to analyse and evaluate. With this research, we would like to devise various design paradigms that could be used to display or represent data in a virtual environment. Having two different virtual environments representing the office and nature, users (N = 19) of the user study had to evaluate if they could recognise the connection between numerical and creative visualisation. Interestingly, users have reported a higher arousal intensity (measure by SAM questionnaire) when the environment and the expected visualisation are not matching. Further on, results suggest that the different kind of visualisation can be more effective and can be used for future VR applications.