Design and evaluation of a user interface for a WebVR TV platform developed with A-Frame

Abstract: The market for virtual reality products has grown rapidly the last few years, and as the demand grows, the supply should naturally follow. More games, applications and also web sites for virtual reality are going to have to be designed and produced to support this demand. However, the guidelines and the literature for designing user interfaces specifically for virtual reality are few and often outdated. The purpose of this thesis is to help contribute to determine how to design user interfaces for virtual reality, when one is making selection with fuse-based clicks. In this thesis, a prototype for a TV-platform is designed and produced in WebVR, using the framework A-Frame. The prototype is then evaluated with usability tests and redesigned as according to an iterative design process. The evaluations showed that items were easily clicked by mistake and often unknowingly. Furthermore, the test user participants often failed to notice user interface objects if the objects were not placed in the centre areas of the user interface. The conclusion suggests that navigation paths within the user interface could mitigate accidental clicks, and auditory feedback could help users notice the accidental clicks. Moreover, between 700ms to 1000ms, but closer to 1000ms, could be an appropriate fuse time to facilitate ease of making selections at the cost of speed efficiency.