Designing virtual selectors for surgeons

Virtual Reality (VR) applications involve the use of manipulators or 'virtual tools' such as pointers, grippers and containers. Manipulation of such tools is a key feature of VR applications. Less attention has been directed towards designing the ways in which users select particular options or information, as they interact in the virtual world, by means of selectors. This is particularly important in the case of professional users, such as surgeons, who typically make heavy use of both selection and manipulation, switching frequently between the two in the course of their work. In this paper we describe the design and evaluation of two types of selector tool for use in medical VR applications. In this account, we provide details of the background behind the research and focus on design aspects of selector tools for use in a particular task context, that of medical surgery planning.