Eliciting Ergonomic User-Defined Gestures for Virtual Reality: A Pilot Study

People are increasingly using virtual reality (VR) for work. As a result of extended use, fatigue and musculoskeletal disorders affecting the upper arms and shoulders are already becoming common among VR users. This pilot study presented a “virtual working area” (VWA) to reduce the risk of fatigue resulting from using gestures obtained in gesture elicitation studies, and explored how the distance to the user interface (UI) interacted with different functions (select, scroll) during a mock reading task. Results showed that keeping the hands within the VWA had the potential to reduce Rapid Upper-Body Limb Assessment (RULA) and Borg CR10 scores at clinically significant levels. Scores were worse when the UI was far away and for the select function, suggesting the design of virtual UIs can play a role in eliciting naturalistic yet ergonomic interactions. The results also provide effect sizes and variance estimates to plan future work.