A design advice tool presenting usability guidance for virtual environments

There is a lack of design advice on how to construct usable virtual environment (VE) systems, even though major usability problems have been reported. This paper details the development and evaluation of a design advice tool for presenting usability guidance to VE designers. The guidance was derived from theoretical work on human-computer interaction in VEs, which detailed stages of interactive behaviour and design requirements to support the stages. The design requirements were translated into concrete design guidelines and a hypertext tool developed to present the guidelines. The design of the tool incorporated knowledge of design practice from studies of VE designers. The usability and utility of the tool was evaluated. Industrial designers found the tool and guidelines to be useful in highlighting usability considerations and in providing a checklist for different design elements. Areas of improvement and extensions to the tool were suggested.