Mississippi State University Scholars Junction Theses and Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 4-30-2021 An empirical study of virtual reality menu interaction and design Emily Salmon Wall [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td Recommended Citation Wall, Emily Salmon, "An empirical study of virtual reality menu interaction and design" (2021). Theses and Dissertations. 5161. https://scholarsjunction.msstate.edu/td/5161 This Dissertation - Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Scholars Junction. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholars Junction. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Template C with Schemes v4.1 (beta): Created by L. 11/15/19 An empirical study of virtual reality menu interaction and design By TITLE PAGE Emily Salmon Wall Approved by: Reuben F. Burch V (Major Professor) Michael Hamilton Daniel Carruth Brian Smith Ginnie Hsu Linkan Bian (Graduate Coordinator) Jason M. Keith (Dean, Bagley College of Engineering) A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Mississippi State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Industrial and Systems Engineering in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering Mississippi State, Mississippi April 2021 Copyright by COPYRIGHT PAGE Emily Salmon Wall 2021 Name: Emily Salmon Wall ABSTRACT Date of Degree: April 30, 2021 Institution: Mississippi State University Major Field: Industrial and Systems Engineering Major Professor: Reuben F. Burch V Title of Study: An empirical study of virtual reality menu interaction and design Pages in Study: 181 Candidate for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy This study focused on three different menu designs each with their own unique interactions and organizational structures to determine which design features would perform the best. Fifty-four participants completed 27 tasks using each of the three designs. The menus were analyzed based on task performance, accuracy, usability, intuitiveness, and user preference. Also, an analysis was conducted between two different menu organization styles: top-down menu organization (Method-TD) and bottom-up organization (Method-BU). There was no evidence that demographic factors had any effect on the overall results. By and large, the Stacked menu design received very positive results and feedback from all the participants. The Spatial design received average feedback with some participants preferring it while others struggled to use it and felt that it was too physically demanding. The worst performer was the Radial design that consistently ranked last and failed to pass usability and accuracy tests. A NGOMSL study was conducted to determine any differences in performance between a top- down menu organizational approach and a bottom-up approach or differences between the predicted task completion times and the reported times. The results of this study predicted that the Spatial design should have taken the least amount of time to perform, however, the experimental results showed that the Stacked design in fact out-performed the Spatial design’s task completion times. A potential explanation as to why the Stacked outperformed the Spatial is the increased physical demand of the Spatial design not anticipated with the NGOMSL analysis because of a design feature which caused a high level of cumbersomeness with the interactions. Overall, there were no statistical differences found between Method-TD and Method-BU, but a large difference found between the predicted times and observed times for Stacked, Radial, and Spatial. Participants overwhelmingly performed better than the predicted completion times for the Stacked design, but then did not complete the tasks by the predicted times for the Radial and Spatial. This study recommends the Stacked menu for VR environments and proposes further research into a Stacked-Spatial hybrid design to allow for the participant’s preferred design aspects of both designs to be used in a VR environment. Keywords: Virtual Reality, Menu Design DEDICATION I would like to dedicate this research to my husband: Andrew, my parents and sibling: Brent, Ramona and Ethan, grandparents Frances, Larry, Truman and Kathleen, and Vicksburg family: Bucky, Kennette, Genna, Linda, Penny, Virginia, and Ken. Without your support and encouragement, I would have never completed this. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author expresses her sincere gratitude to the many people without whose selfless assistance this dissertation could not have materialized. First of all, my sincere thanks are due to Dr. Reuben Burch, my committee chairman, for his time and effort to guide and assist me throughout the intricacies of the doctoral program and dissertation process. Expressed appreciation is also due to the other members of my dissertation committee, namely, Dr. Michael Hamilton, Dr. Daniel Carruth, Dr. Brian Smith and Ms. Ginnie Hsu, for the invaluable aid and direction provided by them. Finally, the author would like to thank Mr. Parker Jones for the invaluable design and coding help used in this study. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION ................................................................................................................................ ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ........................................................................................................... iii LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................ vii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................... ix CHAPTER .......................................................................................................................................1 I. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................1 1.1 Background ............................................................................................................2 1.2 Motivation .............................................................................................................6 1.3 Objective ..............................................................................................................11 1.4 Organization of Work ..........................................................................................13 1.4.1 Scope of Research .........................................................................................13 1.4.2 Task 1 – Review existing VR menu design and interaction literature ..........13 1.4.3 Task 2 – Menu and interaction scenario development & testing ..................14 1.4.4 Task 3 – Testing of Menu Design .................................................................17 1.4.5 Expected Results and Limitations .................................................................25 II. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................28 2.1 Introduction .........................................................................................................28 2.2 Methods ...............................................................................................................29 2.2.1 Study Design .................................................................................................29 2.2.2 Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria ...................................................................30 2.2.3 Literature Search ...........................................................................................31 2.2.4 Data Extraction ..............................................................................................31 2.2.5 Data Grouping ...............................................................................................31 2.2.6 Meta-Analytic Procedure ...............................................................................32 2.3 Results .................................................................................................................32 2.3.1 Sample ...........................................................................................................32 2.3.2 PRISMA Flow Chart .....................................................................................32 2.3.3 Analysis of Factors ........................................................................................33 2.4 Research Summary ..............................................................................................38 2.4.1 Visualizations ................................................................................................39 2.4.2 Software and Hardware .................................................................................43 2.4.3 Interaction design ..........................................................................................44 2.4.4 Haptic Feedback ............................................................................................46 2.4.5 VR Environments ..........................................................................................48 2.4.6 Ray-casting ....................................................................................................49 2.4.7 Pre-attentive processing .................................................................................50 iv 2.4.8