This presentation provides insight into possible standardization of usability guidelines for the evaluation of virtual reality environments.

1. VR Usability Guidelines

2. What does Intuitive mean?
● Intuition is subjective
○ Cultural Differences
○ User Motivation
○ Experience Level
● Strong ethnological research should be a predecessing
step towards any project that involves users.

3. Overview
Heuristics
● Nielsen
● Shneiderman
● Tognazzini
Best Practices
● Oculus Rift: Virtual Environments
● Leap Motion: Motion Tracking

4. Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics
● Visibility of System Status
● Match Between System and the Real World
● User Control and Freedom
● Consistency and Standards
● Error Prevention
● Recognition rather than Recall
● Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
● Aesthetic and Minimalist Design
● Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors
● Help and Documentation

5. Bruce Tognazzini’s Usability Heuristics
● Aesthetics
● Anticipation
● Autonomy
● Color
● Consistency
● Induced Consistency
● Readability
● Simplicity
● State
● Visible Navigation

6. Shneiderman Information Seeking Mantra
● Overview
● Zoom & Filter
● Details on Demand
● View Relationships
● History
● Extract

7. Oculus Rift Best Practices
● Gaze Direction + Cursor
○ Ensuring the user knows where the cursor is within worlds space at all
times
● Depth in Depth Problem
○ How should menus and such appear in content and not behind walls, etc.
○ Treat objects as actual in-world objects
● Projecting HUD’s via Stereoscopic Methods
○ Applications shouldn’t project orthographical content to the screen while
in VR mode; rather it’s always better to project onto a surface that is then
placed in world space

8. Leap Motion Best Practices
● Motion Design Principles
○ Tracking Consistency
○ Ease of Detection
○ Occlusion
○ Ergonomics
○ Transitions
○ Feedback

9. Synthesis of Guidelines
Heuristics should be refined and synthesized to establish
core principles. Specific and individualized principles can be
applied to different mediums. Intuitive applications are:
● Learnable
● Understandable
● Habitual

10. New Guidelines for New Mediums
● Must tend to the needs of the technology
○ Example: Occlusion - Motion Detection
● Emphasis on Human Factors & Ergonomics as wearable,
virtual reality, motion sensing technologies advance and
converge.
● Trade offs between heuristics to fit a specific medium
○ Example: Comfort over aesthetics for motion gestures