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Navigation and Memorization in VR

Experimental Research Study

Timeline April 2019 - June 2019 (8 weeks)

My role  Recruitment Survey Design, Usability Test moderator, Data Collection

Team Wenbo Wang, Zhikang Xu, Bobo Xu

Study Methodology Survey+Screener, Pre-Test Interview, Testing, Post-Test

Project Description

Virtual reality (VR) has gained popularity in video game experience. A lot of video games have adopted VR technology to create an immersive experience for the players. As the VR technology is still in its emerging stage, learning about how people navigate and memorize in a virtual environment (VE) setting is becoming an interesting field that can help game designers and developers to improve the gaming experience.

Minecraft, a classic maze navigation game which enables people to navigate and explore mazes with set goals, has released a VR version recently. Containing 677 both dynamic and static native building blocks, it has become a convenient VR tool to build mazes with visual distractions. 

In this study, we aim to research the impact of static and dynamic visual distractions on people’s navigation and memorization performance in VE setting by using Minecraft.

Research

First, we did lit review around our topics. Then we found out that little research addresses navigation distractions in VE settings, and few field tests were conducted to validate relevant hypotheses.

 

Therefore our research intends to cover the gap between existing studies and the impact of distractions in VE navigation and to make recommendations to VR designers and developers based on the results of our study.

Hypothesis:

 

Moving states of visual distractions have a significant impact on people’s navigation and memory performance in VE.

 

(Dynamic visual distractions will result in poorer navigation and memory performances when compared to static.)

Study Design

Screening survey

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  • Measure participants’ past VR and Minecraft experience.

  • Exclude participants with extensive experience with VR or Minecraft.

Online spatial and visual memory tests

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  • Exclude participants with extraordinary navigation ability and memory capability.

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Two treatment groups

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Group A only encountered dynamic visual distractions in a customized maze in Minecraft VR. Ex: zombie horses, sheep, pigs, and chicken.

Group B only encountered static visual distractions in the maze with exactly the same route. Ex: various types of flowers, grass.

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Tutorial

Before the real maze, participants are asked to complete a short tutorial maze to get familiarized with Minecraft VR controls and the maze environment.

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Main Task

  • After the tutorial maze, the participant will enter the real maze. They need to navigate to the end of the maze which is a room with an ‘End of the Maze’ billboard as quickly as possible.

  • We do not tell participants that their memory performance would also be assessed, to make sure they do not wander about or spend additional time memorizing anything intentionally.

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Pilot Test

  • The first three participants didn’t go through the maze due to motion sickness.

    • Discovered potential confounding variable: motion sickness.

    • The original maze size may cause high dropout rate.

 

  • Adjusted the maze difficulty level and the estimated completion time.

    • We reduced the maze size to ¼  of the original one.

Actual Study

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Participants

  • 16 participants (Female: 7, Male: 9)

  • Age range: 21-54

  • None had extensive VR or Minecraft experience.

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  • Shows the first-person-view of one participant navigating in the maze with only dynamic distractions. 

  • I moderated the test and the participant was doing it. 

All of them went through the maze and felt not very dizzy when they walked slowly.

 

After the test, they were asked to complete the post-test questionnaire while keeping the fresh memory. 

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Data Collection

Completion time

Landmarks recall test score

Point-to-the-end test score

Conclusion

After statistical analysis of our hypothesis, we did not find a statistical difference between two groups, and therefore we failed to reject the null hypothesis. but With α=0.1 (we have a small sample size), there is a significant difference between the impact of dynamic and static objects on visual memory performance.

                Limitation

  • We were limited by the time and funding for recruitment, hence our sample size is too small. 

  • We had to reduce the complexity of our maze due to motion sickness, which resulted in less variance and more noise in the final results.

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Recommendations

  • Recruit more participants.

 

  • Expect advancement in VR technology to reduce motion sickness, and then deploy mazes with different complexity.

 

  • Arrange denser visual distractions to possibly attain more delay on distractions.

 

  • Control more moderating variables, such as motion sickness as well as spatial and visual memory capabilities.

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Thank you for reading > <

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