IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2018 - 42

Furthermore, Jake built up a
distance between himself and his
avatar, making it difficult to fully
immerse himself in the virtual
environment.
demo's game mechanics. The world of Sightline did not bind
him, and even the virtual heights did not trigger any reaction,
with Jake asserting, "Yes, it's deep. So what?" Furthermore,
Jake built up a distance between himself and his avatar, making it difficult to fully immerse himself in the virtual environment. In Blocks, however, Jake became totally immersed by
creating and manipulating the virtual objects. He even got in
some kind of flow, and, due to direct interaction, the immersion succeeds. During his session with Blocks, Jake repeatedly tried to break the stacked blocks and demonstrated his
strength. It even seemed as if he fell into some kind of rage
and decided to put the virtual world to the test. So Jake's
preference for interacting with his environment and its virtual
objects led to an immersion because he attempted to control
the world.
As Jake stated, in Blocks he immediately felt actively present by doing something with his own hands, "So, I would
say, they were somehow my own hands and not that I controlled other people over there. [...] And, yes, [they were my
own] because that was really immediately on the other side
and then grabbing exactly afterwards. I was really over
there. Yes."
In Blocks, Jake perceived himself as an actor. It is he who
was able to act (i.e., "really immediately over"). In comparison to Sightline (i.e., "a movie"), Jake called the environment
of Blocks a parallel universe. But, no matter how much he
was fascinated by his interactions, the framing also caused
discomfort. When the interviewer asked why he didn't stand
up during the demo, Jake answered impulsively, "And to stand
up, to walk a bit, that, I don't know, that would have been
obscene, I would nearly say." The framing as obscene gives an
idea of his resistance toward an altered state of himself.
Instead of experiencing himself as different in the virtual
world or being emotionally affected by it, Jake actively tried
to continue "holding a tight rein," as he called it. His concern

Table 1. Different types of immersion.
oneself

World

Exploration

Focus on the
exploration of
oneself (Ronja)

Focus on the
exploration of the
world (Kathy)

Control

Focus on controlling
oneself (Lloyd)

Focus on controlling
the world (Jake)

42 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

july 2018

to keep the upper hand was expressed by his acts of testing,
tricking, and trying. In contrast to the aforementioned cases,
for Jake, immersion did not occur by enjoying new sides of
himself or by exploring a new world around him. Jake became
immersed in VR by actively controlling the unknown. As Jake
put it, "Yes, it's like in real life. There, I also prefer giving
the impulses."

dIScuSSIon
The qualitative data presented in this study provides a more
accurate insight into the individual preferences toward the
significance of interaction and its relation to immersion. It is
hoped that, in the long run, these findings may contribute to
producing a more diverse basis of applications and experiences.
From a VR developer's perspective, the proposed typology may prove helpful for designing virtual environments because, despite the individual differences, there seems to be a
common ground with the users' experiences. All of the subjects asked themselves the following questions in relation to
their initial contact with consumer VR.
▼ How do I affect this world?
▼ How does this world affect me?
By answering these questions, different types of users tend
to gravitate toward different types of immersion (Table 1). One
limitation, however, is that individual users cannot be reduced
to only one of these types of preferences. There will always be
those who show different orientations at the same time and,
thus, are categorized by different ideal types. Further research,
therefore, should be carefully considered.
This analysis shows that successful immersion depends on
the users' orientations as well as on interactivity, and the structure of virtual environments. In other words, neither interaction
design nor vivid visuals alone are sufficient for producing
immersion. There is no commonly shared access to immersion;
different types of users get immersed in different types of ways.
Therefore, an immersive experience may depend rather on the
primordial orientations of the users than on the degree of interaction in a virtual environment.
While this may seem rather trivial at first glance, it is likely to have tremendous effects on the developer side of VR for
the creation of immersive environments. Since VR is a destination [6] and not a technology, it is far from clear how this
new medium could evolve. Whether it is the next disruptive
technology [21] or not, one thing is apparent: with consumer
VR having arrived, there will be growing interest in the
human aspects linked to these technologies. What are the
social implications of these devices? How might the industry
develop tailored experiences for different users? This study
could clarify that VR needs more than the mere possibility of
manipulating virtual objects. VR needs virtual worlds that
affect emotions and make users feel the sensation of being
exposed to an uncontrollable environment with unpredictable
consequences. While current consumer technology can be
considered appropriate enough for immersion on a technical
level, it does not guarantee successful immersion on an individual level. Therefore, homologous to Bartle's [5] taxonomy

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