Perceived Speed, Frustration and Enjoyment of Interactive and Passive Loading Scenarios in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Long waits and disruptive loading breaks can evoke negative emotions, like frustration. While there is a lot of research on 2D-based loading scenarios, it is unclear how people react to loading screens in an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment. In this paper we conducted a user study to investigate the effects of interactive and passive loading screens on the users' loading screen experience (LSE) in VR. We measured perceived speed, enjoyment and frustration for long and short waiting times. Results show that interactive loading screens improved participants' LSE through increasing perceived speed and enjoyment, and decreased their frustration while waiting. Thus, previous findings of 2D-based research were confirmed. Therefore, our research provides a first approach for further investigations of different loading screens in VR.

Sustainable Digital Communication in Higher Education—A Checklist for Page Loading Speed Optimisation

“…Currently, there is a particular concern regarding studying how the loading time of website pages can influence web user satisfaction [58], but also how their perception can be manipulated regarding waiting time [59][60][61]. Some research has aimed at improving users' emotional experience in terms of waiting time through different types of progress bars, animated feedback [62,63], interactive screens [64] or a combination of them, while others have focused more on measuring user-perceived time in different situations [23,65].…”