Switching User Perspectives: Using Virtual Reality to Understand Users for User Experience Research and Design

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) technology can be used as a tool in user experience (UX) research and design to understand and empathize with users. Several works show that the perspective-taking ability of VR in a simulated, immersive environment is helpful in fostering empathy and understanding, which is a crucial first stage within the UX design thinking process. However, it remains unclear how VR could be used to understand multiple users, reflecting common UX research projects, and what kinds of perspective-taking interaction better facilitate empathy and understanding of the users. This thesis introduces switching perspectives interaction in VR to understand different user problems, reflecting the nature of UX research. We conducted a mixed-methods, between-participant study comparing the switching perspectives to two different user perspectives in order to investigate how different types of perspective-taking influence researchers’ and designers’ understanding and empathy for user problems and needs.

The findings show that both affective and cognitive empathy are fostered across the different perspectives, shown through the avatar embodiment questionnaire and the interpersonal reactivity index questionnaire. The qualitative data indicate that Switching Perspectives influences participants to see the bigger picture of the user problem, prompting them to ideate solutions that impact both user groups compared to Single-Perspective. With these findings, my thesis aims to explain how and why these understandings and empathy are facilitated towards specific user groups. I conclude this thesis with suggestions on using Switching Perspectives and Single-Perspectives in UX research, with recommendations on the general usage of perspective taking in VR to empathize better and understand user problems.