Fagernäs Simon, Hamilton William, Espinoza Nicolas, Miloff Alexander, Carlbring Per, Lindner Philip
Centre for Psychiatry Research, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, & Stockholm Health Care Services, Stockholm, Sweden.
Mimerse, Stockholm, Sweden.
Internet Interv. 2021 Feb 2;24:100370. doi: 10.1016/j.invent.2021.100370. eCollection 2021 Apr.
The advent of affordable Virtual Reality (VR) technology has spurred consumer and commercial interest in VR relaxation applications, which has quickly grown into a popular non-gaming genre on digital marketplaces. While laboratory studies have demonstrated efficacy of VR relaxation for mental health purposes, little is known about how users experience this type of intervention and no study has examined the reception of consumer versions among regular users in everyday life. Studying published user reviews offers a unique window into naturalistic user experiences that complements traditional qualitative methods by circumventing the sampling bias of interview studies, and allowing analyses on full samples, unconstrained by coding resources. Using an innovative, semi-automated Natural Language Processing technique, the current study analyzed 1379 published reviews (including star ratings) of 30 different VR relaxation applications available for the Oculus Go and Gear VR. The uncovered topic structure and sentiment analysis thereof suggests that users have an overall positive view of VR relaxation applications, describing them as successful in inducing immersion and relaxation, and having appreciated gamification elements. However, perceived quality varied substantially between applications that explained more variance in star ratings than specific features. Critical issues raised were both technical (e.g. "overheating") in nature and related to specific design elements and use. Implications for the design of consumer VR applications and future research are discussed.
价格亲民的虚拟现实（VR）技术的出现激发了消费者和商业界对VR放松应用的兴趣，这类应用在数字市场上迅速发展成为一种热门的非游戏类型。虽然实验室研究已证明VR放松对心理健康有益，但对于用户如何体验这种干预方式知之甚少，且尚无研究考察普通用户在日常生活中对消费版VR放松应用的接受情况。研究已发布的用户评论为了解自然状态下的用户体验提供了一个独特窗口，它通过规避访谈研究的抽样偏差，并允许对不受编码资源限制的完整样本进行分析，对传统定性方法起到了补充作用。本研究采用一种创新的半自动自然语言处理技术，分析了1379条已发布的评论（包括星级评分），这些评论涉及适用于Oculus Go和Gear VR的30种不同的VR放松应用。所揭示的主题结构及其情感分析表明，用户对VR放松应用总体持积极看法，称它们在诱导沉浸感和放松方面很成功，并且欣赏其中的游戏化元素。然而，不同应用之间的感知质量差异很大，这在星级评分中比特定功能能解释更多的方差。提出的关键问题既有技术方面的（如“过热”），也与特定设计元素和使用有关。本文讨论了对消费版VR应用设计和未来研究的启示。
