The Effects of Joystick-controlling and Walking-around on Navigating a Virtual Space

The advancement of virtual reality technology offers various locomotion options that support users’ navigation behaviors in a virtual reality environment. This study was aimed at examining the effects of two navigation methods―joystick-controlling and walkingaround― on users’ perceived usability, behavioral engagement, and virtual presence. Fifty South Korean college students were recruited in the study, and they were assigned randomly to one of the two navigation conditions. Participants from each group were asked to observe a 3D object and complete the surveys. They were then asked to repeat the procedure with a 2D image. Using repeated-measures ANOVAs and MANOVA, we found that users using joystick-controlling reported higher usability and showed superior performance to the walking-around group on two tasks. Participants reported a higher behavioral engagement when observing the 2D image. Besides, they perceived a significantly higher virtual presence when observing the 2D image. Finally, we discussed the implications of the findings for the navigation method design.