Location: SZB 556
Speaker: G. C.
Genre: Dissertation
Topic and Abstract: The Design of Wayfinding
Affordance and its Influence on Presence and
Playfulness in Desktop Virtual Environments
For the past few years, virtual environments (VEs)
have gained broad attention from both scholarly and
practitioner communities. However, in spite of intense
and widespread efforts, most VE-related research has
focused on the technical aspects of applications, and
the necessary theoretical framework to assess the
quality of interfaces and designs has not yet been
fully developed. This research, as a response to such
challenges, concerns the usability of three
dimensional VEs. More specifically, this study aims to
investigate the effects of wayfinding affordance
design on users’ task performance and perceptual
experience in 3D desktop VEs.
For this purpose, four different wayfinding affordance
conditions were set up: fixed detached affordance
condition (FDAC), switchable detached affordance
condition (SDAC), portable embedded affordance
condition (PEAC) and fixed embedded affordance
condition (FEAC). Maps and directional cues were
employed to implement wayfinding affordance. The
results show that the design of wayfinding affordance
has significant effects on users’ perceptual
experience as well as their task performance. The
stable interfaces (FEAC and FDAC) were found to
provide a better sense of presence for the users
whereas the manipulative interfaces (PEAC and SDAC)
offered a greater state of playfulness. Task
performance was significantly better where the maps
and cues were provided independently from the VE
interfaces (FDAC and PDAC). The design of different
types of interfaces had a greater impact on non-expert
users than on expert users.
Attendance: 13
No comments:
Post a Comment