Combining Multiple Input Modalities for Virtual Reality Navigation – a User Study

This usability study aims at evaluating in which way different groups of users deal with a multimodal interface for navigating in arbitrary virtual worlds. Besides classical input devices like keyboard, mouse and touchscreen the test subjects can control the system by natural speech utterances as well as dynamic hand and head gestures. Experts tend to use haptic devices, whereas normal computer users and beginners prefer combinations of advanced input devices. As an overall result, the multimodal interface was rated very intuitive since users are not forced to use predefined interaction styles, but can freely choose among multiple input devices, instead.