Eye‐Tracking in Virtual Reality: Usability Assessment of a Regional Heritage Museum

ABSTRACT This paper presents a comparative study of two variants of the user interface in a virtual reality (VR) museum application: an interface designed in accordance with the principles of universal design (UD) and an interface that does not meet these principles (non‐UD). The application was developed in the Unity engine and run on Meta Quest Pro headsets with built‐in eye tracking. During the completion of a set of tasks, eye‐tracking data (including heatmaps and gaze scanpaths) and task completion times were recorded, and subjective ratings were then collected using the standardized system usability scale (SUS). The results indicate an advantage of the UD variant over the non‐UD variant: the mean SUS score was higher for UD (73.75) than for non‐UD (65.31). A Wilcoxon signed‐rank test confirmed the statistical significance of this difference ( Z = 4.87, p < 0.001, r = 0.49). Moreover, tasks were completed faster in the UD variant (total time 40.41 s) than in the non‐UD variant (57.85 s). This difference was also statistically significant ( Z = 5.61, p < 0.001, r = 0.56). Eye‐tracking observations supported these differences, suggesting more efficient interface exploration in the UD variant.