The effects of touchless interaction on usability and sense of presence in a virtual environment

Abstract

For software applications with a significant level of user involvement, the traditional concept of usability has evolved into the more complex idea of user experience, which also covers emotional, cognitive or physical responses. In virtual reality, user experience also depends on the user perception related to some peculiarities of immersive environments, where also the devices employed for user interaction play a determinant role. This has led to the design of the Presence Questionnaire (PQ) for the evaluation of the effectiveness of virtual environments. This work analyzes the effects of two different interaction modalities on usability and sense of presence: in particular, the Myo armband, a gesture-based device for touchless interaction, is compared with the Vive handheld controller bundled with the HTC Vive headset. A total of 84 subjects were recruited to test the virtual environment and asked them to fill in a questionnaire obtained by combining the Usability Metric for User eXperience (UMUX) questionnaire, the System Usability Scale (SUS) and the presence questionnaire (PQ), which was specifically designed for virtual environments. A comparison between the scores obtained for the two interaction modalities revealed which questionnaire items are significantly influenced by the input interface and deduce some insights about the consequences on human factors.

A Study of Metaverse Exhibition Sustainability on the Perspective of the Experience Economy

“…Presence refers to the psychological response or perceived state of immersion of the user during the virtual experience [40,41]. Presence can be defined as the feeling that the user exists in a virtual space, forgetting about the location and the situation [42,43].…”

Microsoft HoloLens 2 in Medical and Healthcare Context: State of the Art and Future Prospects

“…The full texts of 83 papers assessed for eligibility were carefully analyzed. Thirteen articles [ 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 ] were excluded due to the exclusion criteria (1), one contribution [ 29 ] due to the exclusion criteria (2), 17 scientific results [ 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 , 46 ] due to the exclusion criteria (3) and 5 [ 47 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 ] contributions due to the exclusion criteria (4). Finally, only 47 studies were included in the quantitative synthesis.…”

Seamless Crime Scene Reconstruction in Mixed Reality for Investigation Training: A Design and Evaluation Study

“…Developed by John Brooke in 1986, the SUS is a 10-item questionnaire that assesses users' attitudes towards a system based on five dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction, learnability, and memorability. The SUS has been applied in a wide range of contexts, including the evaluation of websites [60], software applications [61], mobile devices [62], and virtual reality applications [63]. In addition, the SUS has been used to compare the usability of different systems [64] and to assess the impact of design changes on usability [65].…”