Using Cognitive Walkthrough and Hybrid Prototyping to Gather User Requirements in Early Design Virtual Reality Prototypes

Abstract

To evaluate Virtual Reality (VR) prototypes usability involves a variety of single-perspective or Hybrid methods. The latter has being suggested by literature as offering a more complete sets of requirements highlighting both ‘in-world’ and user interface problems. This paper describes our experiences in using a single-perspective method for gathering user requirements in the REVERIE (Real and Virtual Engagement In Realistic Immersive Environment) project. The study reports results involving nine evaluators who reviewed two hybrid VR prototypes with educational context. It was found that this approach was effective in highlighting a plethora of usability problems covering all aspects of the two VR prototypes. The performance of our approach was similar to the literature. Although additional validation work is required, we can conclude that our approach may provide a viable option to evaluate early design VR prototypes when required (e.g., when the expertise needed to use a hybrid method is not available). Future work aims to compare the performance of our approach with two-stage and multiple stage hybrid methods.