The Effect of Onomatopoeia to Enhancing User Experience in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Onomatopoeia refers to a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound (or motion that accompanies sound) that it describes. It is often used in comics, games, and videos, along with the actual sound in caption. This usage is a way to emphasize, exaggerate, dramatize and draw attention the situation. In this paper we explore if the use of onomatopoeia, associated with sound feedback, could also bring about similar effects and improve the user experience in immersive virtual reality. We present an experiment comparing the user’s subjective experiences and attentive performance in two virtual worlds, each configured in two test conditions: (1) sound feedback with no onomatopoeia and (2) sound feedback with it. Our experiment has found that the moderate and strategic use of onomatopoeia can indeed help direct user attention, offer object affordance and thereby enhance user experience and even the sense of presence and immersion.