Assessing User Experience of Text Readability with Eye Tracking in Virtual Reality

Abstract

Virtual Reality (VR) technology is mostly used in gaming, videos, engineering applications, and training simulators. One thing which is shared among all of them is the necessity to display text. Text reading experience is not always in focus for VR systems because of limited hardware capabilities, lack of standardization, user interface (UI) design flaws, and physical design of Head-Mounted Displays (HMDs). With this paper, key variables from the UI design side were researched that can improve text reading user experience in VR. Therefore four important points for reading in VR application were selected to be focused on: 1) Difference in canvas type (flat/curved), 2) Contrast on virtual scene (light/dark), 3) Number of columns in layout (1 column/2 column/3 column) 4) Text distance from the subject (1.5 m/6.5 m). For a user study a VR app for Oculus Quest was developed, enabling the possibility to display text while varying some of the features important for readability in VR. This user experiment has shown parameters that are important for text reading experience in VR. Specifically, subjects performed very well when the text was on a 6.5-meter distance from the subject with font size 22pt, on a flat canvas with one column layout. When it comes to physiological variables, the conditions measurements were behaving similarly, as all of the selected parameters were in line with the design guidelines. Therefore, selection on final settings should be more oriented towards user experience and preferences.