About the Study
Learning opportunities
Four Kitchens user experience strategists conducted a usability study on two different versions of a WebVR experience.
Each experience was made up of 360° photo scenes from Four Kitchens employee home offices. In total, there were four 360° photo scenes — two from Mike Minecki’s home and two from Suzy Bates’ home. The engineers developed interface patterns that laid over the 360° photos for the user to navigate between the photo scenes.
Through a comparative usability study of WebVR experience, we wanted to learn more about how users preferred to navigate between the different photo scenes and why. We also wanted to determine which navigation/way-finding options were more intuitive, preferred by the user, and why.
Version A: Navigation uses the footprint icon to move to new space in VR. [Figure 1]
Version B: Navigation uses the location icon with an image preview of the location to move to new space in VR. [Figure 2]
Version B also included:
Home screen with option to select any of the four 360° photos
Each 360° photo has a Home button to return to the Home screen
Changes in height and angle placement for two informational displays
Arrows directing users to look up to see elements much higher than the horizon line in one 360° photo
We wanted to learn what the participants' expectations of 360° photos were, and how they would like to interact with those photos.
Finally, we wanted to learn if and how a single button controller, such as the Google Daydream controller, contributed to the user experience. We wanted to find out which selecting action was more intuitive and/or more enjoyable for the participant.
We used Google Cardboard. Google Cardboard does not have a button so the participant must align the focus reticle on a target in order to make a selection. This is known as fusing.
We used Google Daydream in which the participant used the hand controller to align a line within the experience over a target, then clicked the touchpad button on the controller.
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