User Elicited Hand Gestures for VR-based Navigation of Architectural Designs

Virtual Reality (VR) systems have become an affordable mass market technology, along with 3D building design tools such as Building Information Modelling (BIM). This provides architects, designers and their clients with immersive experiences of evolving building designs. VR systems typically require physical controllers to manage 3D navigation and to invoke other functions within the virtual environment. A range of mid-air, contactless gesture detecting technologies exist which offer the potential of more intuitive interactions between a user and the 3D model they are experiencing. This research elicited a mid-air hand gesture set for 3D building navigation from interviews with architects and other design professionals. The gestures proposed by design professionals were evaluated against known usability factors to determine an initial set of gestures which were tested through a VR navigation task. An evaluation study was performed looking at the memorability, intuitiveness and comfort of the gestures. The data from this study suggests that the developed gesture set is effective.