an engagement heuristic for VR experiences
A while back I was defending my PhD dissertation proposal. In fact, this specifically happened in March 2020, just in that strange interstitial pre-lockdown period where we all knew there was a virus going around but no-one was super clear on what measures would contain it, or if we even needed to be particularly concerned about it.
I was fortunate to have Jeremy Bailenson as my dissertation chair. Prof. Bailenson is a world expert on the intersection of virtual reality and human psychology. This was why I'd sought him out, because my proposal involved many future VR psychology experiments, building on the previous year's work in designing and running my first ones.
All of which is preamble for the sharing of a heuristic that he mentioned during my defence, sort of a passing-down. I believe he's written about this in published work, and so I don't think I'm sharing any secrets here. One reasonable heuristic for engagement in an immersive experience, such as a virtual reality experimental experience, is just this: how much does the participant turn their head around?