Player Experience of Needs Satisfaction (PENS) in an Immersive Virtual Reality Exercise Platform Describes Motivation and Enjoyment

ABSTRACT

Recent research suggests that virtual reality (VR) games can engage players in physical activity with high levels of enjoyment. Understanding users’ motivation to engage and enjoy immersive VR exercise platforms is thus important to designers. We designed a VR exercise platform and conducted an experiment with two conditions, one with a static user interface (UI) and the other with an open world environment. Across participants there was significantly (p = 0.03*) greater enjoyment reported in an open world compared to static UI. Enjoyment in both static UI and open world conditions was positively correlated wih user’s psychological needs and experience; autonomy and immersion. Participants’ future play intention was also predicted by autonomy and immersion, but only within the open world condition. Our findings also suggest players can be classified into entertainment-focused and exercise-focused with different expectations and therefore different engagement behaviors with each VR exercise environment. The study highlights the value of informing VR design with measures of psychological need satisfaction.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge contribution of Richard M. Ryan for study design and providing access to the PENS questionnaire. Also, M. Johan Alibasa who has developed the Android App used in this work for tracking physiological signals with Microsoft band 2.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kiran Ijaz

Kiran Ijaz is a Research Fellow at Australian Institute of Health Innovation. Her research interests include VR and AI applications for health and education. She received multiple research awards including the 3rd place in the AI Contest (2011) organized by U.S. Army, best paper and best poster awards.

Naseem Ahmadpour

Naseem Ahmadpour is Senior Lecturer in Design Lab, School of Architecture, Design and Planning, The University of Sydney. Her research is focused on the design of digital technologies that support wellbeing in the context of health and healthcare.

Yifan Wang

Yifan Wang is a PhD student in School of Electrical and Information Engineering at The University of Sydney. He received his undergraduate’s and master’s degree from Beihang University, Beijing. His research focuses on human-computer interaction, virtual reality, and software engineering.

Rafael A. Calvo

Rafael A. Calvo is Professor at the Dyson School of Design Engineering at Imperial College London and co-Lead of the Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence. Rafael is coauthor of “Positive Computing”, co-Editor of the IEEE Transaction on Technology and Society, and author of over 200 publications.