Simple Guidelines for Testing VR Applications
Salvatore Livatino, Koeffel Christi · InTech eBooks · 2008
In recent years the number of virtual reality (VR) applications and devices employed in companies as well as in research facilities has increased remarkably.The applications developed call for human-computer interaction, which in turn calls for system and usability evaluations.These evaluations are usually conducted by means of measurement of human behaviour including aspects of perception, action, and task-performance.Traditionally, evaluations are held in specially designed usability laboratories but the new tendency requires researchers and even students that are non-experts in the field of usability, to evaluate applications.Hence, these studies take place at the premises of laboratories at universities or research institutes.This raises the question of whether non-experts are able to conduct evaluations in a professional manner.Furthermore, the evaluation issue calls for multi-and inter-disciplinary collaboration, where technical expertise is combined with humanistic knowledge and methodology.Several experts in the field of VR, as well as in the field of usability studies, call for producing helpful guidelines in order to be able to evaluate VR applications.This chapter gives an overview of the problem and introduces a guideline for evaluations of VR applications which aims to assist researchers in evaluating VR devices and installations,and in particular usability novices.This chapter also aims to facilitate multidisciplinary activities through the use of an evaluation guideline which would be simple and focused on VR.The applicability and usefulness of the proposed guideline are based on the authors' experience in supervising and coordinating several university student projects related to the development of VR visualization technologies and applications.Furthermore, the guideline has been tested through several case studies where students were asked to evaluate their final year projects.The results showed how the proposed guideline could successfully be employed by non-experts to carry out pilot and formal evaluations.Therefore, this chapter is expected to represent a valuable reference for students and non-usability experts who design VR systems or applications and wish to run a user study to assess usefulness and general usability characteristics of their products.