VIRTUAL STORYTELLING DESIGN BASED ON THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL BASIS OF IMMERSION, PRESENCE AND NEUROSCIENTIFIC HUMAN TENDENCIES

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Burcu Nimet Dumlu

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Abstract. Immersive virtual environments [which is virtual reality [VR] for this research] are new mediums for storytelling. The 3D aspect of the VR interface creates links with architectural design features. Therefore, architecture is a crucial part of the user experience of VR environment. Both the interface and the medium itself needs to be designed with architectural features. Norman explained 'the experience design' as designing product, service, process, event, and environment by focusing on the quality and pleasure of the total experience (Norman,2013). The user experience of VR synchronously includes most of the elements Norman mentioned. The research motivation is which includes the virtual story space and virtual storytelling. When the user behaviors and the reactions are understood, the designer will design the story and the story space based on these data.

 

The perception of virtual presence is provided by the surrounding feature of virtual reality system with visual and aural stimulations to the user, so the perception of being physically present has created. This study is focusing on measuring, understanding and decoding the human experience by defining the parameters of emotional and perceptional stimulants such as the crowd of the space, luminousness level, sound level and also human neuroscientific tendencies which are defined as biophilia, bilateral symmetry, thigmotaxis, pareidolia, mirror neurons, proxemics and mnemonics (Sussman & Hollander, 2015), the controlled variables inside the virtual environment. The aim of this research is creating an architectural and human behavioural design guide for virtual storytelling as the virtual built environment. The perceptional, emotional and behavioural measurements are doing based on these parameters. These measurements become the design basis for virtual storytelling.

 

Storytelling inside virtual environment includes both visual and aural stimulants inside 360-degree space, so the experience is differentiated from other storytelling experiences. Room-scale experience of HTC Vive HMD [Head Mounted Display] gives the opportunity of wandering around the story space with its fully immersive feature. Although it provides an enriched story experience, the user of VR [virtual reality] HMD is distracted by three-dimensional space. Then he/she cannot follow the storyline with full attention and cannot remember or learn the story properly. If human tendencies and perceptional data during the VR experience can be understood, then the experiences become enriched. In this way, the use of VR experience can be widened. Measuring the physical [behavioral], psychological and emotional data during VR experience will be the frame of this work.

 

The objective is understanding and decoding the stimulants, factors, and behaviors during story experience to guide the virtual storytelling design. Enriching the user experience of VR storytelling by achieving the goal that the user can follow the storyline while exploring the story space by understanding the experience data which are both quantitative and qualitative.

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Keywords: Virtual Reality, Immersion, Presence, Neuroscientific Human Tendencies