Three levels of metric for evaluating wayfinding

  • Authors:
  • Roy A. Ruddle;Simon Lessels

  • Affiliations:
  • School of Computing University of Leeds, Leeds, UK;School of Computing University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

  • Venue:
  • Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments - Special issue: 2004 workshop on VR design and evaluation
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

Three levels of virtual environment (VE) metric are proposed, based on: (1) users' task performance (time taken, distance traveled, and number of errors made), (2) physical behavior (locomotion, looking around, and time and error classification), and (3) decision making (i.e., cognitive) rationale (think aloud, interview, and questionnaire). Examples of the use of these metrics are drawn from a detailed review of research into VE wayfinding. A case study from research into the fidelity that is required for efficient VE wayfinding is presented, showing the unsuitability in some circumstances of common metrics of task performance such as time and distance, and the benefits to be gained by making fine-grained analyses of users' behavior. Taken as a whole, the paper highlights the range of techniques that have been successfully used to evaluate wayfinding and explains in detail how some of these techniques may be applied.