Designing Touchless Hand Gestures Interactions on Desktop Virtual Reality (dVR) in classroom: Understanding Issues Through Thematic Analysis

The Education Performance and Delivery Unit (PADU) in Malaysia encourages educators to provide world-class education by incorporating virtual reality (VR) into classroom to accommodate the needs of 21st-century learning[1] and desktop virtual reality (dVR) remains relevant to be used. Nonetheless, an enjoyable and cost-effective medium of interaction should be considered. Because of intuitiveness and naturalness of touchless hand gestures interaction, it is suitable to be used as a means of interacting on dVR. However, designing precise touchless hand gestures interactions on dVR for classroom learning is a challenging task. Thus, it is vital to gain a better understanding of learners' issues that arise while using such interactions. Through use of ethnography in gathering data using observation and informal interview during in-person experiment as well as thematic analysis (TA) in analyzing qualitative data helps authors to get a clearer idea of issues patterns when learners use touchless hand gestures on dVR. The findings reveal a pattern of issues in which a lack of visual cues affected the precision of interaction and control. Skill and barrier are themes derived from issues associated with eight interaction design codes, such as control, complexity, out of range, layout, affirmation, sensitivity, confidence level, and peripheral. Hopefully, these findings will help experts and educators better understand the issues and factors to consider when designing touchless hand gestures interactions for VR in the future.