Part I: Presence, who or what are you?
Topic of presence is a very confusing and tangled, sometimes differing even withing the same use case. Few times I have even seen presence and immersion used interchangeably in the same sentence! This may not feel important to some, but my scientist soul is screaming to heavens! And this indifference made me confused big time, any time I was searching for anything related to VR.
That has finally change.
And hopefully this article will change that for YOU too.
Presence, who or what are you?
All definitions have one thing in common: presence is described as subjective perception of being there. That gave me hope that there is some common phenomenon everybody tries to refer to.
After hours and hours of sifting through countless papers, publications and websites, my research led me to International Society for Presence Research. ISPR defines presence as failing to acknowledge role of technology in delivering Experience.
Presence is failing to acknowledge role of technology in delivering Experience.
And just to be clear, the Experience is defined as “a person’s observation of and/or interaction with objects, entities, and/or events in her/his environment; perception, the result of perceiving, is defined as a meaningful interpretation of Experience”.
Diving even further into precise world of definitions, Presence refers to the subset of human experience in which this misperception involves, at least in part, the actual role of technology in the experience. Confused yet? Well, bare with me, I will explain. Presence occurs when part or all of an individual’s experience is mediated not only by the human senses and perceptual processes but also by human-made technology, while the person perceives the experience as if it is only mediated by human senses and perceptual processes. What’s also quite relevant, Presence only DURING using technology, and NOT before or after, in an instant-by-instant manner.
Here it is necessary to add two more “special words” that will help in future discussions. Instead of using a long and confusing ways to mention real world experience, real perception, or just “normal” life, ISPR calls it first order experience, which is basically perception without technology as mediator. It’s counter-part — experience mediated through technology, is simply called second order perception.
Wait, what about that “Immersion”?
As I mentioned at the beginning, Presence is often confused or mixed with something called Immersion. Now, I will talk in details about it soon enough, but we need to distinguish those two phenomenons already now, or we will drawn again in confusion. Now, following Slater (2009) line of thinking, the difference goes like this:
- Presence is a psychological state of being there, so in other words it describes subjective side of VR experience,
- while Immersion is a description of human-made technology that this experience is conveyed through — in other words it describes objective side of VR experience.
Am I more present than you?
As with most of phenomenons in human experience, Presence can also be described on a scale. In this particular case, it is from 0 to 2, which represents balance between first (0 points) and second (2 points) order experience:
- (0) aware & acknowledge role of technology — basically, if I have my phone in a Homido Mini, which allows me to see real world surrounding, and I am looking at Cardboard Design Lab for the hundredth time, I am going to notice that my Samsung S6 screen needs a bit of cleaning, my Homido is already falling apart, and all those technicalities that are related to technology medium instead of content itself;
- (1) partial (i.e. thinking about tech, but perceived being inside VE) — here a story could go as follows: I am testing a new content with Oculus DK2 and this new game is not too shabby, but well, how should I say it… DK2 is not letting you forget about technology medium so easily with its resolution and a sense of bulkiness. So while I am into this new game, I still pay attention to Oculus and, obviously, its cable, among other things;
- (2) unaware of technology channel — have you played Drift already? That game where you are a bullet and there is absolutely fantastic narrative that takes about [SPOILER ALERT!] trained squirrels. Anyway, for the first few minutes (before I need to repeat mission for 10th time and fall at least once from my office chair :P ), I forget about my GearVR, office chair, my own body, and just… dodge those low-poly cowboys! And lets not forget about music that keeps you on your toes! All in all, maximum presence happens when the virtual world becomes your real world.
Is that all I need to know about Presence?
Well, what do you think? Could the most critical topic of Virtual Reality be cover in just few words? Obviously — No. Now you know what the Presence really is and how to properly use this word as opposed to Immersion. But that is not everything, it is just the tip (any Archer fans around? :D)!
Coming next:
- Part II: So there is more than one type Presence? Dimensions of Presence
- Part III: Why do I care? Importance of Presence
- Part IV: How present am I? Measurements methods of Presence
Read = no? Listen = YES!
If you don’t want or don’t have time to read, or possibly you are an audio learning kind, I encourage you to check out our podcast ResearchVR. More on Presence in ResearchVR 008 — Presence in VR: Defining it, Achieving it, and Never Breaking it
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