User Experience of Interactive Omnidirectional Video: Case Hugo Simberg VR

Virtual reality technology is gaining popularity and market saturation with new types of head- mounted display devices reaching the market in the recent years. With more conventional uses, such as industrial simulators for flight lessons, the newer technologies have found their way on the consumer market, being used at home for entertainment and gaming. An emerging way to create these types of applications is using omnidirectional video as the basis. These Interactive omnidirectional video applications can be developed comparatively quickly, while still offering some challenges in the development process. User Experience Design in the field of virtual reality has been gaining more foothold in the field of virtual reality application development. User experience offers a multitude of design frameworks and approaches to find the user needs and to ensure for the best user experience. While this design process is suitable for development on this field, the user experience and design implications regarding virtual reality and interactive omnidirectional remain quite limited. User Experience design methods were used in a development process for an interactive omnidirectional video application, Hugo Simberg VR, which allows the user to explore a museum and a cathedral virtually. This thesis discusses this undertaken design process, from the initial exploratory design phases to the iterative refining design phases, and the evaluation of the finished application. The results of the evaluation identified nine experiential dimensions in interactive omnidirectional video, of which six were perceived with positive valence, and three with negative valence. These findings show that these dimensions should be considered in the design of interactive omnidirectional videos