Abstract for Lunch-time Discussion during CVE'98, June 17-18, Manchester.

Abstract

Virtual Environments (VEs) are a novel application area of computing technology, demanding an understanding of human-computer interaction and computer mediated human interaction in virtual spaces. Standard usability engineering and HCI evaluation techniques do not directly address the usability problems introduced by these new applications. The technology on which VEs are built is in its early stages, with in particular the human factors impact of its specific features still poorly explored (Durlach & Mavor, 1995), illustrated by the fact that significant usability problems with VEs have been found (Kaur, Maiden & Sutcliffe, 1998). To address this lack of VE specific usability tools, comprehensive guidelines for the design and evaluation of VEs have to be developed. Investigating the human behavioural aspects which affect performance and satisfaction in VEs, is a prerequisite of developing tools for VE usability-design and evaluation. It requires focused exploratory studies of the unique aspects and phenomena of VEs, embedded in a general framework of scientific inquiry (Groot, 1969). This will allow us to explore the usability issues introduced by VE specific problems with latency, 3D interaction, and realism. In order to achieve an understanding of these usability problems we must carry out investigative empirical work, such as analysis of representative VE user tasks, observations of user actions, develop and test VE presence-, interaction- and collaboration-models, and deduce usability requirements, culminating in an extension of existing HCI tools.

In order to create usable, scaleable VEs one has to work from the premise that there will always be a limit to available computing communications resources. Indeed, VE designers seem to work within two constraints, i) a human constraint: the VE has to be effective and intuitive, and ii) a machine constraint: the VE has to utilise minimum computational load and network traffic. The respective, conflicting solutions to satisfy these two constraints seem to be i) use of realistic representations and metaphors to allow users to transfer their everyday knowledge to the VE, and ii) simplification of these representations. As a result, the real challenge for VE usability researchers is to "prioritise specific user and application needs and then to find ways of supporting them within a limited computing resource" (Bowers, Pycock, O'Brien, 1996). Usability research seems to need to focus on VE usability trade-offs, such as between run-time performance and user performance; object representation and affordance representation; presence, co-presence and minimalist design; etc. Numerous researchers in the VR community have produced work in these areas. Combined into an overall meaningful structure these focused studies provide insight into the specific and unique features of VEs. We would like to open a discussion between VE usability researchers and VE usability designers on these and other usability topics in order to explore the commonalities of our respective research findings and frameworks of inquiry.

References

Bowers, J., Pycock, J., O'Brien, J., (1996). Talk and Embodiment in Collaborative Environments, in Proc. of ACM CHI'96, ACM Press.

Durlach, N.I., Mavor, A.S., (1995). Virtual Reality: Scientific and Technological Challenges, National Research Council, National Academy Press, USA.

Groot, A.D., de, (1969). Methodology: foundations of inference and research in the behavioral sciences, Mouton & Co, Belgium.

Kaur, K., Maiden, N., Sutcliffe, A., (1998). Interacting with Virtual Environments: an evaluation of a model of interaction, to be published in: Interacting with Computers, Special Issue on VR.

NB: This document has been published on paper, the reference is:

Tromp, J.G., Kaur, K., Hand, C., Istance, H., Steed, A., (1998). Usability for VR Interfaces, in: Proc. of CVE'98, Manchester, (eds.) Snowdon, D., Churchill, E.

One up in the hierarchy:

Page with general links about VE Evaluation discussion.

CRG Technologies
CRG Research
Communications Research Group
Department of Computer Science
University of Nottingham