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Hand-adaptive user interface: improved gestural interaction in virtual reality

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Abstract

Most interactive user interfaces (UIs) for virtual reality (VR) applications are based on the traditional eye-centred UI design principle, which primarily considers the user’s visual searching efficiency and comfort, but the hand operation performance and ergonomics are relatively less considered. As a result, the hand interaction in VR is often criticized as being less efficient and precise. In this paper, the user’s arm movement features, such as the choice of the hand being used and hand interaction position, are hypothesized to influence the interaction results derived from a VR study. To verify this, we conducted a free hand target selection experiment with 24 participants. The results showed that (a) the hand choice had a significant effect on the target selection results: for a left hand interaction, the targets located in spaces to the left were selected more efficiently and accurately than those in spaces to the right; however, in a right hand interaction, the result was reversed, and (b) the free hand interactions at lower positions were more efficient and accurate than those at higher positions. Based on the above findings, this paper proposes a hand-adaptive UI technique to improve free hand interaction performance in VR. A comprehensive comparison between the hand-adaptive UI and traditional eye-centred UI was also conducted. It was shown that the hand-adaptive UI resulted in a higher interaction efficiency and a lower physical exertion and perceived task difficulty than the traditional UI.

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Notes

  1. This e-shopping VR application was supported by the ‘Buy+’ program from Taobao corporation (https://www.taobao.com), Alibaba group.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the (National Natural Science Foundation of China) under Grant (61902097), the (Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Funding) under Grant (Q19F020010), the (Open Research Funding of State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology of Nanjing University) under Grant (KFKT2019B18), and the (Open Research Funding of State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology and Systems) under Grant (VRLAB2020B03).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Digital Media and Design, Hangzhou Dianzi University, Room 505, No. 10 Teaching Building, Xiasha Campus of Hangzhou Dianzi University, Jianggan District, Hangzhou, 310018, Zhejiang Province, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaolong Lou & Peng Du

  2. College of Computer Science and Technology, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Xiangdong A. Li

  3. Department of Computer and Systems Sciences (DSV), Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Preben Hansen

  4. State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaolong Lou

  5. State Key Laboratory of Virtual Reality Technology and Systems, Beihang University, Beijing, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaolong Lou

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  1. Xiaolong Lou
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Correspondence to Xiaolong Lou.

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Lou, X., Li, X.A., Hansen, P. et al. Hand-adaptive user interface: improved gestural interaction in virtual reality. Virtual Reality 25, 367–382 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-020-00461-7

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