Effects of desktop 3D world design on user navigation and search performance

Desktop virtual reality (VR) offers a powerful environment for visualizing structure in large information sets. In well-designed virtual worlds, users can employ skills from wayfinding in the real world. The paper reports on the development and testing of a series of prototype VR worlds, designed to support navigation during information visualization and retrieval. Results indicated that users subjectively preferred naturalistic environments over abstract ones, but that users objectively searched better in environments that had rigorous hierarchical structure, and support for both overview and detail. In comparison with a hypertext interface, the final virtual world design elicited more enjoyment, without worsening search performance significantly, when appropriate training time was allowed. This prototype shows the potential value of navigable VR that is engaging and useful for everyday information exploration.