Constant visual biofeedback in a VR rowing exergame significantly increased user ratings for helpfulness, sympathy, and flow, but significantly decreased task performance.
Does constant visual biofeedback on breathing patterns improve user experience and task performance in VR exergames?
Visual biofeedback in VR exergames improves user experience metrics like flow and sympathy, though it may initially decrease task performance.
With the rise of Virtual Reality (VR) as trend in technology - also available for end users - came many opportunities for serious and gaming applications. One domain of games for virtual environments are exergames - a combination of exercising and gaming. For many exergames, users need to be instructed on how the exercise has to be performed correctly. In this study, a rowing simulation is extended by visualizations in VR that show constant live biofeedback information about the rowers current breathing patterns. In order to compare the effects of such additional information, several visualizations of biofeedback were designed: animation of lungs, line chart, and numerical breathing synchronization feedback. The main goal of the game for participants was to focus on their breathing rhythm and maintain it. Results show that helpfulness and sympathy were rated statistically significantly higher for the case of combined instructional elements compared to no elements. Moreover, participants rated rowing in VR statistically significantly higher on the sympathy scale compared to rowing without VR. Furthermore, flow was rated statistically significantly higher for the conditions including all instruction types. There was a significant decrease of task performance for conditions with performance visualizations. For future studies we are planning to use longer stimulus duration, greater than 10 minutes, due to this change we expect that a potential increase of task performance will manifest.
Kojić et al. (Sun,) reported a other. Constant visual biofeedback in VR rowing exergame vs. No biofeedback / rowing without VR was evaluated on User experience (helpfulness, sympathy, flow) and task performance. Constant visual biofeedback in a VR rowing exergame significantly increased user ratings for helpfulness, sympathy, and flow, but significantly decreased task performance.