Toward Human-Centered Immersive Media Design: Comparative Insights from VR and Television Cultural Experiences

Abstract

The rapid development of immersive technologies has transformed how cultural content is experienced, highlighting the need to examine how different media interfaces shape user experience from a human factors perspective. This study compares Virtual Reality (VR) and Television (TV) in presenting identical cultural content, focusing on usability and multidimensional user experience. Participants experienced the content via either a VR head-mounted display or a large-screen TV and completed the System Usability Scale (SUS) and a user experience questionnaire based on Preece et al. (2007).Results show that VR significantly outperformed TV in usability, learnability, satisfaction, enjoyment, entertainment, perceived helpfulness, and perceived gain. VR’s immersive and embodied interaction enhanced engagement and emotional involvement while reducing cognitive effort in understanding cultural information. Across all experience levels, VR received consistently higher evaluations, with novice users showing particularly strong positive responses, indicating high accessibility and intuitive interaction.From a human factors perspective, the findings underscore the importance of immersion and interactivity in cultural content design. VR demonstrates strong potential for enhancing cultural understanding and engagement, while the results also suggest opportunities for cross-media strategies that integrate VR’s immersive strengths with TV’s narrative accessibility.

Keywords: Human Factors, Virtual Reality, Television Interface, User Experience, Immersive Technology, Cultural Content Design

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1008067