Competitive Usability Analysis of Immersive Virtual Environments in Engineering Design Review

A competitive usability study was employed to measure user performance and user preference for immersive virtual environments (VEs) with multimodal gestural interfaces when compared directly with nonstereoscopic traditional CAD interfaces that use keyboard and mouse. The immersive interfaces included a wand and a data glove with voice interface with an 86 in. stereoscopic rendering to screen; whereas, the traditional CAD interfaces included a 19 in. workstation with keyboard and mouse and an 86 in. nonstereoscopic display with keyboard and mouse. The context for this study was a set of real world engineering design scenarios. These design scenarios include benchmark 1-navigation, benchmark 2-error finding and repair, and benchmark 3-spatial awareness. For this study, two populations of users were employed, novice (n = 15) and experienced (n = 15). All users experienced three successive trials to quantify the effects of limited learning. Statistically based comparisons were made using both parametric and nonparametric methods. Conclusions included improved capability and user preference for immersive VEs and their interfaces were statistically significant for navigation and error finding/repair for immersive interfaces.