Better Information Understanding through Virtual Technologies? A VR Experiment on Data Interpretation

Today, data and information are commonly visualized in 2-dimensional representations. However, with the emergence of 3-dimensional environments and multimodal virtual reality (VR), new possibilities for data visualization have arisen, such as affordances for deeper immersion into the visualizations and embodiment of a variety of perspectives in the visualizations. Therefore, we conduct a 2×2 (immersion: high/low, and embodiment: high/low) between-subjects experiment (including a 2D control), within a financial visualization setting. With a final sample size of 170, we investigate how immersion and embodiment—impact data interpretation of trends (return) and volatility (risk) - two crucial measures in data literacy that are critical for many urgent societal issues. Our results demonstrate that 3D representations, compared to 2D baseline lead to similar performance in trend interpretation, but lower performance in volatility interpretation. Within the 3D conditions, neither the main effects of immersion nor embodiment led to significant differences in information interpretation.