A Conceptual Model of Immersive Experience in Extended Reality

The term immersion or immersive is popularly used when describing and evaluating technologies in the area of extended reality (i.e., virtual/augmented/mixed reality). Much research been conducted on immersion over the last few decades. However, there is still a lack of consistency in how the term is defined in the literature. Presence and involvement are other prominent concepts studied in the field of extended reality. However, there is currently no consensus on their relationship with immersion among researchers. This paper first discusses different dimensions of immersion as well as those of presence and involvement, aiming to resolve potential confusion around the terms and synthesise a relationship among them. From this, a new conceptual model of immersive experience for future studies in extended reality is proposed. The model defines physical presence, social/self presence and involvement as the main high-level attributes that collectively lead to an immersive experience. Each pair of the three attributes shares a common lower-level attribute of sensory, narrative or task/motor engagement, which is an initial step towards the higher-level experience. Plausibility, interactivity and interestingness are defined as the main properties of immersive system and content, each of which is biased by a subjective factor: internal reference, skills/knowledge and personal preference, respectively.