A comparison of guidance cues in desktop virtual environments

Designers of educational and entertainment desktop virtual environments (VEs) have employed a variety of cues for motivating users to perform actions or adopt particular viewpoints. However, there has been little formal study comparing user responses to such cues. This paper reports the results of a preliminary study of five cues (agents, signs, man-made landmarks, environmental landmarks, and trails) for motivating actions in virtual environments. Given a sample task of navigating to a target destination, no significant differences between the cues were observed in terms of overall success or speed. However, significant differences between the cues were found on other measures, including minimization of detours (trails) and awareness of guidance (agents, signs, trails). Frequency of desktop VE usage was also found to influence performance.