The Impact of Task-Responsibility on User Experience and Behaviour under Asymmetric Knowledge Conditions

Virtual Reality presents a promising tool for knowledge transfer, allowing users to learn in different environments and with the help of three-dimensional visualizations. At the same time, having to learn new ways of interacting with their environment can present a significant hurdle for novice users. When users enter a virtual space to receive knowledge from a more experienced person, the question arises as to whether they benefit from learning VR-specific interaction techniques instead of letting the expert take over some or all interactions. Based on related work about expert-novice interaction in virtual spaces, this paper presents a user study comparing three different distributions of interaction responsibilities between participants and an expert user. The Role-Based interaction mode gives the expert the full interaction responsibility. The Shared interaction mode gives both users the same interaction capabilities, allowing them to share the responsibility of interacting with the virtual space. Finally, the Parallel interaction mode gives participants full interaction responsibility, while the expert can provide guidance through oral communication and visual demonstration. Our results indicate that assuming interaction responsibility led to higher task loads but also increased the participant’s engagement and feeling of presence. For most participants, sharing interaction responsibilities with the expert represented the best trade-off between engagement and challenge. While we did not measure a significant increase in learning success, participant comments indicated that they also paid more attention to details when assuming more interaction responsibility.