Using Multi-Level Precueing to Improve Performance in Path-Following Tasks in Virtual Reality

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Virtual Reality
• Augmented Reality

Background:

• Current VR/AR task guidance often provides information only for the immediate step.
• Research suggests benefits from precueing the next step, but optimal precueing strategies remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the impact of precueing multiple upcoming steps on task efficiency in VR.
• To compare different precueing levels and visualization styles for path-following tasks.

Main Methods:

• A remote VR user study was conducted.
• Participants performed a path-following task with varying precueing levels (number of steps) and styles (line-based path vs. target graphics).
• Task completion time and subjective metrics were collected.

Main Results:

• For visualizations with lines, performance peaked with two to three precues, degrading with four.
• For visualizations without lines (target graphics only), performance peaked with one precue, degrading with two.
• Visualizations with lines generally led to better performance than those without.

Conclusions:

• The optimal number of precues in VR/AR task guidance is dependent on the visualization method.
• Line-based path visualizations benefit from multiple precues, while graphics-only target visualizations are best with fewer precues.
• These findings inform the design of more efficient VR/AR interfaces for complex tasks.