The Impact of Body Position on the Usability of Multisensory Virtual Environments: Case study of a virtual bicycle

Abstract

There is a trend towards the use of Virtual Reality (VR) environments and its evolution has promoted new interaction approaches so there is a need for studying a number of factors that can have impact on its usability. This paper studies the impact of the body position on the usability of VR environments. For the effect, a case study was undertaken based on a bicycle ride that considers two body positions: riding the bicycle seated with the feet on the pedals and hands in the handlebar; and standing with the feet on the ground and the hands on the handlebar. On both cases they had control over the bicycle (steer and brakes). These two body positions were considered as they will allow studying in detail the impact of the different body positions: the first condition mimics the real body position of the depicted scenario while the second condition tests an alternate body position. Results regarding the system's effectiveness have shown an 100% success rate as all participants concluded the task successfully and there were no dropouts. The efficiency results have revealed that the more the participants used the VE the less the number of errors they made and that the completion time differences between the tested conditions were insignificant (> 0.5 seconds). As for satisfaction, participants reported a preference towards the standing position. Furthermore, results reveal that body position has impact on the users' performance but it does not necessarily affect their satisfaction over the virtual experience. © 2016 ACM.