Companies in the UAE should prioritise the overall user experience over profitability when building their businesses in the metaverse, experts told Arabian Business, as the threat of cybersickness looms.
Cybersickness occurs when users spend a lot of time in front of their screens – be it their mobile phones, laptops, desktops and even their virtual reality (VR) devices – and is a “common user problem” today, according to research.
Similar to seasickness and motion sickness, cybersickness brings in nausea, cluster headaches, and even a “disorientation in sensory input,” Inery Blockchain’s chief executive officer and co-founder, Dr Naveen Singh told Arabian Business.
Singh explained that, “your eyes give your mind a contradictory report from what your inner ear senses tell the brain. The mismatch confuses the brain, which disorients it. The result is quite similar to motion sickness,” adding that it is triggered by prolonged screen activities and is common among those who use multiple screens simultaneously.
“A virtual meeting with face-paced scrolling of presentations, or using VR devices also triggers cybersickness,” Singh said.
Clinical studies published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Nature have increasingly found side effects pertaining to the metaverse.
“Despite the technological advancements in virtual reality (VR), users are constantly combating feelings of nausea and disorientation, the so-called cybersickness,” the Nature study said, adding that “cybersickness symptoms cause severe discomfort and hinder the immersive VR experience.”
However, this is not a phenomenon that could just affect gaming in the metaverse as the study writes, “the use of virtual reality (VR) in the treatment of psychiatric disorders is increasing, and cybersickness has emerged as an important obstacle to overcome,” it said, warning that “the clinical factors affecting cybersickness are still not well understood.
“People must stay in the metaverse”
That being said, the emergence of cybersickness could be potentially be fatal to the metaverse, especially as businesses in the UAE have begun operations to base their businesses, recruit human resources, and more via the digital realm.
Singh said that UAE companies building businesses in the metaverse “should focus on reducing visual latency, creating peripheral devices for senses besides vision and audio, and creating powerful yet lightweight and untethered augmented and virtual reality devices.”
According to Inery’s Singh, the main concern around cybersickness stems from companies “trying to cut production costs,” in its efforts to make VR devices more accessible.
“So, you see most companies modify their VR devices to make them smaller, but also operate on less powerful processors. What this does is introduce dizzying graphics that will cause users to experience VR sickness,” he said, adding “we want people to actually stay in the metaverse, not come and leave with medical issues.”
Cybersickness involves three sensory inputs – the visual system, where the eyes tell the brain what they see; the vestibular system where the inner ear senses one’s head movement and balance; and the proprioceptive system or the sensory receptors for what your entire body feels.
However, Kuwait-based founder and chief executive of Ayadi Latifah Al Essa said that cybersickness could also affect mental health.
“Excessive digital use can be associated with mental health issues, such as depression, irritability and stress, among others,” Al Essa told Arabian Business.
She also added that these immersive environments can be used in further treating various mental health issues such as PTSD, phobias and various anxiety disorders, however, “the relationship between the metaverse and mental health is yet to be fully understood, and exploring this will be a learning process.”
Al Essa added the several companies in the Middle East can curb mental health concerns by “encouraging leadership teams to talk openly about mental health in an effort to destigmatise the topic and normalise the conversation in the workplace; providing counselling and coaching sessions for those in need; giving employees access to online mental health resources to reduce stress and anxiety; allowing greater flexibility; and promoting healthy work-life balance habits.”
Artificial horizons can lower cybersickness, but is not the fix
As for solutions to combat cybersickness – which has been around ever since the emergence of the internet – Singh said, “VR developers have tried to implement artificial horizons in VR videos to lower cybersickness, but it is not the ultimate fix.”
He further went to explain that the use of joysticks used in VR, which mimics natural movements could “weaken or align the mismatched signals sent to the brain.”
“The best solution is to reduce overall screen time and take frequent breaks from the metaverse to rest your eyes, change your positioning, and stretch your body. But eventually, it should be possible to make the field of view large enough to perform tasks with a consistently high frame rate, and maybe blur out-of-focus scenes and objects, will not cause cybersickness,” Singh said.
In a study conducted by Germany’s Coburg University, two out of 18 volunteers – who spend an entire week in a VR headset – dropped out of the study on the first day, citing cybersickness.
As for the rest of the 16 volunteers, the study said their “task load had increased, on average by 35 percent. Frustration was by 42 percent, the ‘negative affect’ was up 11 percent, and anxiety rose by 19 percent. Mental wellbeing decreased by 20 percent, eye strain rose 48 percent, and VR ranked 36 percent lower on usability. Participants’ self-rated workflow went down by 14 percent and their perceived productivity dropped by 16 percent.”
These side-effects could eventually result in the decline of businesses in the metaverse.
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