Characterizing UX Assessment in the Context of Immersive Experiences: A Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract

An immersive experience is a multisensory experience across a journey or task that’s contextually relevant, enabled by a combination of interactions that create intuitive and emotional value for the user. As the technological landscape has evolved, immersive experiences have become increasingly integrated into our lives. The rise of immersive experiences comes with a focus on how to evaluate those experiences considering User Experience (UX). UX is a multifaceted construct, and its importance differs according to the type of experience. In this scenario, knowing how to evaluate UX is fundamental to understanding whether immersive experiences are pleasant. Despite some attempts to address the UX, a systematic approach to addressing UX in the immersive context still needs to be developed. This paper presents a Systematic Literature Mapping (SLM) to investigate how UX evaluations have been performed and the main UX dimensions that should be considered in immersive experiences, such as engagement, presence, and immersion. Our main result is a theoretical model that we proposed based on the UX definitions and relations from the literature. Our model can help study the relations between UX dimensions, establishing the primary UX dimensions regarding immersive experiences, and as a base for developing new UX evaluation techniques.

Keywords:

• Immersion
• user experience
• UX
• systematic mapping study
• immersive experience
• presence

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - Brasil (CAPES-PROEX) under Finance Code 001; Amazonas State Research Support Foundation (FAPEAM) through the POSGRAD 22-23 project; CNPq under Grant 314174/2020-6; FAPEAM under Grant 062.00150/2020; Espírito Santo Research and Innovation Support Foundation (FAPES) under Grant 2023-5L1FC.

Notes on contributors

Leonardo Marques

Leonardo Marques holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Federal University of Amazonas (UFAM—Brazil). He received his master’s in Computer Science at the UFAM in 2017. His research focuses on the intersection between Software Engineering and Human-Computer Interaction, investigating how to evaluate the UX of immersive experiences.

Monalessa P. Barcellos

Monalessa P. Barcellos is Associate professor at the Computer Science Department, Federal University of Espırito Santo. Senior member of the Ontology and Conceptual Modeling Research Group (NEMO) and co-coordinator of the Software Engineering Practices Laboratory (LabES). Main research interests: Software Engineering, Ontologies in Software Engineering, Ontologies in Human-Computer Interaction, Ontology Engineering.

Bruno Gadelha

Bruno Gadelha holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio). Since 2013, he has been an associate professor at UFAM, specializing in Software Engineering, Human-Computer Interaction, and Collaborative Systems. His research focuses on UX, interaction technologies, collaborative software development, and computer education.

Tayana Conte

Tayana Conte is Associate Professor at the UFAM. Her research focuses on UX, Human Factors in Software Development, and Empirical Software Engineering. She has published over 300 papers in conferences and journals. In 2023, she became the first person from Latin America to receive the IEEE TCSE Distinguished Education Award.