Visual Attention to Wayfinding Aids in Virtual Environments

Abstract
In an empirical evaluation, we examined participants' visual attention allocation to a dynamic wayfinding map in a complex simulation meant to educate medical practitioners in a hand hygiene protocol. Complex virtual environments (VEs) are novel types of virtual worlds that embody large spaces, interactive virtual humans, static and dynamic virtual entities, and intricate tasks that simulate real-world settings. Previous investigations of wayfinding aids have focused on the evaluation of spatial orientation, knowledge acquisition, and usage. We employed an eye tracker and created visualization tools to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze participants' visual attention to the wayfinding aid in our simulation. Results suggest that the proportion of time of gaze, total gaze count, and gaze transitions between various elements of the VE are altered with the use of the wayfinding aid. Participants also tend to employ innovative visual strategies in order to efficiently plan routes and accomplish tasks in the VE.
Description

        
@inproceedings{
:10.2312/EGVE.JVRC13.009-016
, booktitle = {
Joint Virtual Reality Conference of EGVE - EuroVR
}, editor = {
Betty Mohler and Bruno Raffin and Hideo Saito and Oliver Staadt
}, title = {{
Visual Attention to Wayfinding Aids in Virtual Environments
}}, author = {
Bertrand, Jeffrey
and
Ebrahimi, Elham
and
Wachter, Aliceann
and
Luo, Jun
and
Babu, Sabarish V.
and
Duchowski, Andrew T.
and
Meehan, Nancy
and
Gramopadhye, Anand K.
}, year = {
2013
}, publisher = {
The Eurographics Association
}, ISSN = {
1727-530X
}, ISBN = {
978-3-905674-47-7
}, DOI = {
/10.2312/EGVE.JVRC13.009-016
} }
Citation