Exploring the potential of colour in immersive VR experience design

The immersive potential of virtual reality (VR) technologies offers an enhanced platform for impacts in design and behavioural research. The evaluation of design principles for creating immersive VR experiences could offer new insights into the study of emotional engagement and cognitive performance, including gaming-based platforms, learning platforms, business applications and therapy-based aversion treatments. These applications of VR into the study of immersion and visual stimuli emphasise how a better understanding of the key visual design tool – colour – could be effectively used to enhance the immersive experience of VR environments.

Colour is known to have more significant impacts beyond aesthetic values, with 70%-80% of visual stimuli received being through colour (Lee et al., 2021). VR offers an immersive colour experience beyond conventional colour imaging devices and can potentially enhance people’s engagement and performance. The key finding of this research is that the effective use of colour can enable an immersive VR experience to be designed that enhances emotional engagement and cognitive performance.

In this thesis, the potential of colour to influence emotion and cognitive performance in immersive VR environments was investigated. The knowledge that selective colours can stimulate human spontaneity is an established and progressive area of research. Prior to VR, colour effects were typically evaluated against a static background, for example, via a digital display. In this research, four studies were conducted to gauge the influence of colour stimuli on people’s emotions and cognitive performance to advance the design of immersive VR environments.

The first experiment in this study was designed to explore the influence of immersive coloured lighting environments on emotional engagement, and the responses colour can trigger compared to real- world environments. This was achieved by re-evaluating colour psychology theories established in the 1970s using relatively simple imaging projectors. Using a much richer set of immersive technologies, colour is demonstrated to have a significant positive impact on emotion. A unique Thouslite LED system in the real world and a corresponding immersive VR environment were used to provide the immersive colour experiences. This research shows the potential of immersive colour stimulation as a design tool that can induce emotional engagement in both real-world immersive coloured lighting environments and VR environments. The results also suggest that VR replicas may bring about increased positive emotional states. The findings of this study demonstrate that positive immersive experience delivered via VR systems can be designed using selective colours.

The second study explores the impact of immersive colour experience design on cognitive performance and intellectual abilities. The focus is on the impacts of hue on cognitive performance in a real-world laboratory and an almost identical VR environment. The study builds on the preliminary research indicating that immersive VR environments enhance levels of arousal and emotional engagement. Hypothetically, a considered approach to colour design can positively impact cognitive performance. This study suggests that the immersive qualities of VR environments have a greater impact than conventional colour imaging devices. Comparative experiments using psychological methods were carried out in both a real-world laboratory and an identical VR setting to investigate the effects of an immersive colour experience on cognitive performance and intellectual abilities (logical, lateral thinking abilities and their attention to details). The findings of this study demonstrate that a well-designed immersive colour experience in VR can trigger positive user engagement and improve cognitive performance. The results also indicate that participants experience an increase in impulsivity in a VR replica environment, suggesting increased motivation and greater confidence in decision-making. This again positions immersive colour experience as an important design tool to be considered in the creation of effective VR research and applications.

The third and fourth studies explored the potential of colour stimuli as a design tool in VR by focusing on the impacts of colour attributes (chroma and brightness) on people's cognitive performance and intellectual abilities in immersive VR environments. The study builds on the hue study, which suggests that a well-designed immersive colour experience in VR can generate positive user engagement and improve cognitive performance. The chroma and brightness studies were conducted by evaluating the participants' cognitive performance and was recorded while using the VR headset. The findings of this colour attributes study further revealed that a well-designed immersive colour experience in VR can trigger positive user engagement. Additionally, different levels of chroma and brightness can significantly influence arousal and impulsiveness, which suggests that colour attributes have indirect impacts on cognitive performance.