Evaluation of Technology Accessibility and User Sentiment in Learning Through Virtual Reality Modality

How would your organization's employees respond to a deployment of virtual reality-based training? Would they be excited, inspired, or perhaps intimidated by new technology? We tested the accessibility of virtual reality (VR) as a modality for training PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) employees, and we observed negative and positive sentiments associated with various approaches to VR engagement. This case study presents our efforts to improve VR headset onboarding and game play experience by analyzing user experience from the time they show up for the VR learning experience to the time they leave. We describe learner capabilities and skills required to interact with the headset and voice-recognition technology in a simulation based learning experience, the methods we used to identify user sentiments and infer causes, as well as our efforts to address user needs by adjusting our VR learner experience design. In selecting our test user population, we attempted to represent the diversity of PwC learner demographics, including gender, ethnicity, employee role / function, practice group within PwC, and other characteristics that could have had a material impact on VR equipment use, such as prior experience with VR, use of eyeglasses, and presence of various accents when speaking. Our heterogenous group of testers pushed us to acknowledge user sensitivities, which we had previously underestimated. We changed our VR onboarding protocol in order to mitigate reticence to learning in VR. We believe that as the technology becomes more prevalent in the enterprise and more employees experience the value VR brings to the training experience, the overall sentiment toward VR will continue to improve. We hope our study motivates continued research to improve accessibility of VR technology, enterprise implementation of VR, user-interface design, and voice recognition technologies used in gameplay.