Altering User Movement Behaviour in Virtual Environments.

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Virtual Reality
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Users in immersive Virtual Reality (VR) systems often navigate virtual environments (VEs) as they would physical spaces.
• Understanding how VEs deviating from physical reality affect user behavior is crucial for effective VR design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of discrepancies between virtual and physical environments on user navigation behavior.
• To determine how aesthetic and object-pairing variations in VEs influence user trajectories.

Main Methods:

• Developed two sets of four virtual environments with aesthetic (e.g., water surface) and object-pairing (immaterial vs. tangible) discrepancies, plus a baseline.
• Designed a study where participants navigated to waypoints, analyzing trajectory deviations from the shortest route.
• Measured performance based on path alterations in response to conflicting visual stimuli and real-world layout awareness.

Main Results:

• Participants significantly altered trajectories when encountering virtual surfaces indicating higher walking difficulty (e.g., water).
• Ambiguous graphical appearances did not lead to significant trajectory alterations.
• Environments mixing immaterial and physical objects caused the largest deviation (60 cm) compared to aesthetic alterations (37 cm).

Conclusions:

• Virtual environment design significantly influences user navigation, with physical affordances like surface type having a greater impact than ambiguous visuals.
• The presence of both tangible and intangible objects reinforces the perception of physical reality, guiding user movement.
• Guidelines can be derived from these findings to intentionally modify user movement behavior within VEs.