Expanding Targets in Virtual Reality Environments: A Fitts' Law Study

TL;DR

This study investigates how expanding target sizes affects pointing performance in virtual reality environments, demonstrating that larger targets significantly reduce selection time in VR head-mounted displays.

Contribution

It fills a research gap by systematically examining target expansion effects in VR HMDs using a Fitts' law-based user study.

Findings

Expanding target width by 1.5 times reduces selection time.

Expanding target width by 2.5 times further improves performance.

Target expansion benefits are significant compared to no expansion.

Abstract

Target pointing selection is a fundamental task. According to Fitts' law, users need more time to select targets with smaller sizes. Expanding the target to a larger size is a practical approach that can facilitate pointing selection. It has been well-examined and -deployed in 2D user interfaces. However, limited research has investigated target expansion methods using an immersive virtual reality (VR) head-mounted display (HMD). In this work, we aimed to fill this gap by conducting a user study using ISO 9241-411 multi-directional pointing task to examine the effect of target expansion on target selection performance in VR HMD. Based on our results, we found that compared to not expanding the target, expanding the target width by 1.5 and 2.5 times during the movement can significantly reduce the selection time. We hope that the design and results derived from the study can help frame future work.