Some Lessons Learned Running Virtual Reality Experiments Out of the Laboratory
This is an incremental position paper offering practical insights for researchers conducting VR experiments outside controlled settings.
The paper addresses the transition from laboratory to remote virtual reality experiments, highlighting challenges in data capture and opportunities for engaging a more diverse participant population.
In the past twelve months, our team has had to move rapidly from conducting most of our user experiments in a laboratory setting, to running experiments in the wild away from the laboratory and without direct synchronous oversight from an experimenter. This has challenged us to think about what types of experiment we can run, and to improve our tools and methods to allow us to reliably capture the necessary data. It has also offered us an opportunity to engage with a more diverse population than we would normally engage with in the laboratory. In this position paper we elaborate on the challenges and opportunities, and give some lessons learned from our own experience.