PhD Seminar • Human-Computer Interaction • Drum Menu: Bimanual Controller Command Access Techniques in Virtual Reality

Please note: This PhD seminar will take place online only.

Futian Zhang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science

Supervisors: Professors Jian Zhao, Keiko Katsuragawa

Current Virtual Reality (VR) Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs) offer limited shortcuts for rapid command access, which often requires users to navigate menus through precise visual targeting at multiple depths. This process can be slow and distracting, particularly during immersive gaming or productivity tasks.

While marking menus have shown effectiveness as a shortcut command access mechanism, their performance in VR has not been adequately studied. Moreover, their potential integration with 6-degree-of-freedom (6-DoF) controllers and 2-DoF joysticks in VR environments remains largely unexplored.

In this paper, we introduce the Drum Menu, a bimanual shortcut command access technique derived from the idea of traditional pie menus, featuring three input methods, designed for 4-item and 8-item layouts specifically for VR controller command access. Users can select commands by rotating the joystick, drawing a stroke, or pointing in different directions. Bimanual input enables simultaneous access to two menu levels. A controlled user study reveals that drum menus are faster than the unimanual versions for the 4-item layout. Additionally, users prefer the bimanual joystick drum menu with the 4-item layout given its short task time, low error rate, and low physical movement. For the 8-item layout, stroke drum menus are found to be less error-prone for expert users compared to the other techniques.

Attend this PhD seminar virtually on Zoom.