Increasing User Engagement in Virtual Reality:The Role of Interactive Digital Narratives to Trigger Emotional Responses

Abstract

Immersive multimedia technologies such as virtual reality (VR) create narrative experiences in the digital medium, thus revolutionizing how people communicate, learn, and think. These Interactive Digital Narratives (IDN) shape end-users’ experience with a broad potential for various applications. A fundamental aspect of achieving this potential is the establishment of a positive and engaging user experience. This study investigates how enabling the interactive narrative in a VR setting affects the engagement of the users. The study we base this work on involved thirty-two participants in a controlled experiment where they were asked to explore a designed VR environment, with and without a digital narrative. We observed a significant increase in the participants’ level of engagement in the narrative-based environment compared to the non-narrative VR environment. The results showed how the IDN in VR generates an increased emotional response, strengthening the users’ engagement, showing that IDN can be considered an essential factor in shaping the positive experience of end-users, thus shaping a better society.