Objective: The aim of this study is to identify the differences in meeting experiences between hand gesture interaction and controller-based interaction within the context of VR meeting.
Background: Compared to desktop-based remote meetings, HMD-based remote meetings facilitate non-verbal communication through gestures and enable communication similar with face-to-face meetings, leading to more efficient meetings. Although research on HMD-based VR (Virtual Reality) remote meetings has been ongoing, there is a lack of studies on how collaboration experiences vary depending on the interaction methods used. As interaction methods in VR continue to evolve, user experience-focused research in remote meetings should be argued.
Method: To measure usability, presence, immersion, and collaboration experience based on interaction methods in HMD-based VR remote meetings, an experiment was conducted. Two participants, located in different physical spaces, wore HMDs and met in the virtual reality environment of Spatial to propose chair design ideas in 10-minute meetings. Four groups initially used hand gestures, while another four groups used remote controllers for the first meeting. For the second meeting, the interaction methods were swapped. Following the meetings, surveys and semi-structured interviews were conducted.
Results: When conducting VR remote meetings using hand gesture interaction, only the independent variable 'usability' was found to be statistically significant in the regression model, indicating that 'usability' affects 'collaboration experience'. However, when using remote controller interaction for VR remote meetings, only the independent variable 'immersion' was found to be statistically significant in the regression model, indicating that 'immersion' affects 'collaboration experience'.
Conclusion: This study quantitatively and qualitatively identified the influencing factors on user experience in VR meeting. The significance lies in discovering that differences in interaction methods affect several factors of user experience.
Application: The insights from this study can serve as foundational data to enhance interaction methods from a user experience perspective during design ideation tasks in HMD-based VR meetings.