Full length articleThe state of immersive technology research: A literature analysis
Introduction
Immersive technology is technology that blurs the boundary between the physical and virtual worlds and enables users to experience a sense of immersion (Lee, Chung et al., 2013∗, Lee, Shan et al., 2013). Immersive technology, including augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), is increasingly pervasive in our daily lives. Research in diverse fields, such as education (Frank and Kapila, 2017∗, Pribeanu et al., 2017∗), marketing (Huang & Liao, 2017), entertainment (Arino, Juan, Gil-Gómez, & Mollá, 2014), and healthcare (Zhao, Ong, & Nee, 2016), has shown that the use of immersive technologies enhances learning experiences (Huang, Chen, & Chou, 2016), fosters participation in collaborative activity (Fonseca, Martí, Redondo, Navarro, & Sánchez, 2014), and increases creativity and engagement (Huang, Rauch, & Liaw, 2010). Despite increasing scholarly attention paid to immersive technology, there is a lack of coherent understanding about what immersive technology is, the types of studies that have been conducted in the field of immersive technology, the methods that have been used in these studies, the results such research has yielded, and the conditions under which the studies were conducted.
Despite the increasing popularity of immersive technology and its influence on business and society (Huang & Liao, 2015), relatively little research has been conducted to better understand what we know and what we need to know about immersive technology and how users experience these technologies. A systematic review of the existing literature that synthesizes research findings and identifies gaps in our understanding can offer future research direction. Accordingly, this study systematically reviews the relevant immersive technology studies that have been conducted and analyzes research trends, topics, methodology, and contexts related to these studies. Specifically, the following questions are answered by the literature analysis.
- 1.
What are the trends and focus of immersive technology literature?
- 2.
What are the major theoretical foundations of previous immersive technology studies?
- 3.
What are the research methods used in previous immersive technology studies?
- 4.
What are the research contexts and samples that appear in previous immersive technology studies?
- 5.
What are the factors associated with immersive technology use?
By answering these questions, through a review of the existing body of empirical research, this study contributes to the understanding of user experience and performance in immersive environments and identifies current best practices in the study of such experiences and immersive technology performance.
This paper is organized as follows. First, the definitions of immersive technology and its related concepts are presented. Second, the search procedures for literature identification are described, and the results of the 54 identified studies are analyzed. The stimulus–organism–response (S–O–R) framework is used as an overarching theoretical platform to classify and consolidate the factors associated with immersive technology use. Drawing on this classification, an integrative framework is developed that takes into account user experience and performance in the context of immersive technology use. Finally, future research directions and the study's theoretical and practical contributions are discussed.
Section snippets
Definitions of immersive technology and its related concepts
Researchers have defined immersive technology from different perspectives. Some researchers have describe sensory information as a unique property of immersive technology; for example, Slater (2009) defines immersive technology as technology that offers a high quality or quantity of sensory information to the user. Other researchers emphasize users' immersive experiences while using the technology, such as Lee, Chung, et al. (2013), who define immersive technology as technology that blurs the
Research methodology
To consolidate the extant knowledge on immersive technology, the literature review begins by identifying articles that address issues regarding immersive technology use. We follow the two-stage approach suggested by Webster and Watson (2002) and Boell and Cecez-Kecmanovic (2015). After relevant articles are identified by a keyword search at the first stage, more rigorous inclusion and exclusion processes are applied to the selection of the articles at the second stage. The two-stage review
Overview of research trends
First, we examined the bibliometric data of the 54 included papers. We deducted that the number of studies on immersive technology has been rapidly growing, because 43% of the studies (n = 23) were published in the period 2016–2017. We attribute the fast growth to the advancement of location-based sensing technology and the proliferation of mobile technologies. Fig. 3 shows the number of publications from 2010 to 2017. With regard to the domains under which research on the topic was conducted,
A classification framework for immersive technology use
As mentioned in the previous section, many studies have employed flow theory to investigate user experience in immersive technology research, possibly because this theory allows researchers to assess the extent to which a user experiences a sense of immersion while using a technology. While studies that employed flow theory mainly focused on measuring users' psychological state as a cognitive response to an immersive technology, the antecedents and consequences of immersive technology use were
Framework for immersive technology use
Although previous studies have examined the diverse aspects of immersive technology use, the current study revealed that no comprehensive framework has been used to explore the relationships between these aspects, including system features, users' cognitive and affective states, and the consequences of immersive technology use. By acknowledging the research gaps in existing immersive technology studies, this research builds on the S–O–R framework to propose an integrative framework for
Discussion
Recently, researchers and practitioners have paid increasing attention to immersive technology. However, little research has been done to systematically summarize and synthesize the existing knowledge. This study seeks to consolidate the factors examined in immersive technology studies into a classification framework, which can serve as a theoretical platform that researchers can test, verify, and revise to develop an understanding of immersive technology use. Based on the literature analysis,
Conclusion
The findings of the present systematic literature analysis indicate the number of studies on immersive technology is on the increase. Given that the use of immersive technologies is expected to become more widespread in the future, more empirical studies are needed to theorize the effects of immersive technology use on user experiences and performance. We hope that this literature review will help researchers understand the current state of immersive technology and develop research agendas for
Acknowledgement
This research was supported by grant from the Centre for Applied Computing and Interactive Media (ACIM), City University of Hong Kong awarded to the first author.
Ayoung Suh is Assistant Professor of School of Creative Media and Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include virtual collaboration, virtual communities and teams, virtual identity, and the effects of emerging technology in the workplace. Her papers have been published in Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Knowledge Management, Journal of Information Science, Computers in
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Ayoung Suh is Assistant Professor of School of Creative Media and Department of Information Systems, City University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include virtual collaboration, virtual communities and teams, virtual identity, and the effects of emerging technology in the workplace. Her papers have been published in Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Journal of Knowledge Management, Journal of Information Science, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Computer Information Systems, Internet Research, and others.
Jane Prophet is Professor of Interdisciplinary Art and Computing, Goldsmiths College, University of London. Prophet's practice-based research and writing emerges through collaborations with neuroscientists, stem cell researchers, mathematicians and heart surgeons. Her papers position art in relation to contemporary debates about new media and mainstream art, feminist technoscience, artificial life and ubiquitous computing. Her current research includes the apparatus of contemporary neuroscience experiments, blended online/offline identities via augmented reality and ubiquitous computing.