Evaluating design guidelines for reducing user disorientation in a desktop virtual environment

  • Authors:

  • Shamus P. Smith;Tim Marsh

  • Affiliations:

  • University of York, Department of Computer Science, York YO10 5DD, UK and Department of Computer Science, University of Durham, Durham DH1 3LE, UK;Eindhoven University of Technology, Department of Industrial Design, 5600 MB, Eindhoven, The Netherlands and Integrated Media Systems Center, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 900 ...

  • Venue:
  • Virtual Reality
  • Year:
  • 2004

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Abstract

Navigation in virtual environments can be difficult. One contributing factor is user disorientation. Two major causes of this are the lack of navigation cues in the environment and problems with navigating too close to or through virtual world objects. Previous work has developed guidelines, informed by cinematography conventions, for the construction of virtual environments to aid user comprehension of virtual space to reduce user disorientation. To validate these guidelines, two user studies have been performed where users of a desktop virtual environment are to complete a navigation task in a virtual maze. In an initial study [12], collision detection with the maze walls was not enabled and the results indicated that the guidelines were effective for reducing disorientation but not for developing the user’s awareness of the environment space. A second study has been performed where collision detection was enabled. Results suggest that the use of the guidelines can help reduce the incidences of user disorientation and aid navigation tasks. However, the guidelines have little impact on users’ ability to construct cognitive maps of the desktop virtual environment.