A study of button size for virtual hand interaction in virtual environments based on clicking performance

In virtual environments (VEs), virtual hand interaction is one of the most common and natural interaction methods. To improve the usability of hand interaction, it is necessary to determine the design requirements of buttons for virtual hand clicks. In this paper, a virtual hand clicking experiment in virtual reality (VR) was conducted to test the click performance under different width and spacing conditions of controls. The experiment set three independent variables, including five width levels (1.6 degrees, 2.0 degrees, 2.4 degrees, 2.8 degrees, 3.2 degrees), six spacing levels (0.2 degrees, 0.6 degrees, 1.0 degrees, 1.4 degrees, 1.8 degrees, 2.2 degrees), and four clicking directions of the consecutive clicking buttons. According to the experimental results, under a clicking distance of 45 cm, the spacing of adjacent buttons should be more than 1.4 degrees, and the width of buttons should be more than 2.4 degrees. Based on the experimental results, the information throughput (TP) of the virtual hand clicking in VEs is between the TP of the mouse and the handheld touch screen. The button design suggestions obtained in this paper are of guiding significance to the interface design for virtual hand clicking interactions in virtual environments.