The Impact of Usability and Learnability on Presence Factors in a VR Human Body Navigator

Alongside the traditional concept of usability, dealing with the ease of use of a product, over the years the concept of learnability has been introduced, which refers to the possibility of learning to use a system easily and quickly. In contexts characterised by a significant level of user involvement, the traditional concept of usability has evolved into the more complex concept of user experience, which also includes emotional, cognitive or physical responses. In the specific case of virtual environments, an important factor of user experience is the sense of presence, defined as the subjective experience of being in a place. This work aims at experimentally assessing which components of presence are significantly influenced by usability and learnability in a Virtual Reality environment for the navigation in the human body developed for the HTC Vive. The presence factors analysed in this work were Realism, Ability to act, Interface quality, Ability to examine and Self-assessment of performance. The results showed a significant impact of usability mainly on the perception of realism and a limited impact of learnability on the ability to act in the virtual environment.