Sticky and Magnetic: Evaluating Error Correction and User Adaptation in Gaze and Pinch Interaction

TL;DR

This study evaluates two heuristics, STICKY and MAGNETIC, to improve gaze-and-pinch interaction in VR by reducing coordination errors and understanding user adaptation.

Contribution

It introduces and empirically tests two novel heuristics for error mitigation in gaze-and-pinch VR interactions, revealing their effects on user behavior and error classification.

Findings

Both heuristics significantly reduced coordination errors.

MAGNETIC selection caused users to trade precision for speed.

User behavior shifted, reclassifying some failures as errors.

Abstract

The gaze-and-pinch framework offers a high-fidelity interaction modality for spatial computing in virtual reality (VR), yet it remains vulnerable to coordination errors--timing misalignments between gaze fixation and pinch gestures. These errors are categorized into two types: late triggers (gaze leaves a target before pinch) and early triggers (pinch before gaze arrival on target). While late triggers are well-studied, early triggers lack robust solutions. We investigate two heuristics--STICKY selection (temporal buffer) and MAGNETIC selection (spatial field)--to mitigate these errors. A within-subjects study (N = 9) on the Samsung Galaxy XR evaluated these heuristics against a baseline. Findings indicate that while throughput and selection time remained stable, the heuristics fundamentally shifted user behavior and significantly reduced errors during selection. Notably, MAGNETIC selection induced an "offloading" effect where users traded precision for speed. Additionally, the heuristics reclassified ambiguous failures as explainable coordination errors. We provide recommendations for selection heuristics that enhance interaction speed and cognitive agency in virtual reality.