Can phenomenology inform the experience of virtual reality?

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) is typically defined as computer-generated or -assisted three-dimensional environments that create an experience of immersion, allow user-interaction and are set apart from the real world in some way. These images can be displayed on screens, projected onto walls or experienced through head-mounted displays with increasing degrees of immersion.

Accounts by users of virtual reality often fall short in their ability to describe the experience. The greater immersion and interaction that are possible within VR confer a reality to the experience which is at odds with the inherent unreality of the medium as it is set apart from physical reality.

The literature of phenomenology (that is, the philosophy of the lived experience of individuals) aims to define the building blocks of what this sense-making of the world around us is built from. The aim of this study is that by using these concepts, and rebuilding a phenomenology of the lived experience of virtual reality, it is possible to develop a language and framework for describing the essential elements of the experience of virtual reality and so enable better analyses of interacting and learning within these spaces.