Evaluating Usability, Cognitive Load, and Presence in VR Tutorials: A Preliminary Study

The adoption of virtual reality (VR) in fields other than entertainment has resulted in non-VR users being exposed to immersive experiences. VR onboarding is essential to set up novice users for success. However, research pertaining VR onboarding is limited. This paper examines usability, cognitive load, and presence on exploratory (i.e., finding solutions through exploration) and step-by-step onboarding approaches found in some commercial video games and serious games developed for research. Our preliminary results indicate that exploratory onboarding is perceived more usable, cognitive load was similar between the two onboarding strategies, and presence was higher on exploratory onboarding.