General Overview of Virtual Reality User Interface

As is true when starting out any new research topic, it is best to begin with a general overview of the knowledge base before narrowing in on anything too specific. For this reason, I went to Google Scholar with the search query 'virtual reality user interface' and started sifting through results. I found one article, A Survey of Design Issues in Spacial Input, particularly helpful as a jumping off point into virtual reality interfaces and have summarized some of the main points in this blog post.

The first sentence of the articles states, "We present a survey of design issues for developing effective free-space three-dimensional (3D) user interfaces."

The authors have split their discussion into two sections, those issues that deal with human perception and those that deal with ergonomic concerns.

The first section, about human perception, makes the point that there is a difference between understanding and experiencing 3D space. Humans can experience 3D spaces by exploring them and learning about them and this ability comes quite naturally to most. Understanding 3D space, as in being able to mentally manipulate 3D objects is a different matter.
With this in mind there are a number of considerations to take into account when designing a 3D UI:

• spatial reference 
• relative vs. absolute gesture
• two-handed interaction
• multisensory feedback
• physical constraints
• head-tracking techniques

The paper then goes into greater detail about each of these considerations.

The ergonomic section of the paper discusses how to make the interfaces comfortable for a user. This means designing interfaces that allow users to act in the same way that they do in the real world. For example, in many tasks users tend to utilize a very small volume of space around their bodies. Having a user interface which requires large movements over an extended period of time is unnatural and fatiguing. Also, designing an interface with multiple ways to input information such as through hand gestures, mice and keyboards can also be tiring both physically and mentally.

Reference


Ken Hinckley , Randy Pausch , John C. Goble , Neal F. Kassell, A survey of design issues in spatial input, Proceedings of the 7th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, p.213-222, November 02-04, 1994, Marina del Rey, California, United States