Designing a virtual reality environment for reading literature: Prelude to an experiment with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

This contribution presents the process of designing a virtual environment for reading using a VR headset. The aim is to set up an environment that invites readers to experience Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in a new way. Our VR literature concept explores the idea of books as worlds to enter. Its central questions concern how to design new media to enliven older media forms of literature. Decisions taken in the design process concern the shape given to the portions of text displayed, as well as their flow and localization in a virtual 3D space. The hypotheses to be tested in upcoming research are whether this kind of literary experience can attract new readers and help them to be more absorbed in the story – more focused and emotionally engaged – and establish a more vivid memory of what they read. This article is a description of hypotheses about how to design a VR reading environment so as to achieve these results.