Comparing and Evaluating Menu Placement for Immersive Virtual Reality

Interacting with immersive information visualization displays in Virtual Reality (VR) can impose a significant task load. The design of menus for system interactions in VR largely influences a user’s interaction and navigation in the immersive environment. To analyze data in such an environment, several factors such as awareness, visibility and accessibility of the menu play an important role. In this study, we compare two versions of menu placement in immersive VR data visualization: a controller-based pop-up menu attached to the left-hand controller and a wall-fixed menu, to understand which one provides a better user experience for VR visualization applications. We also derived design guidelines to keep in mind when designing menu location for immersive visualization environments. The results of this research suggest that the wall-fixed menu placement was preferred by most users for its visibility, usefulness and ease of control. However, participants would like to be able to move the wall-fixed menu depending on their location to avoid occluding the visualization display. The controller-based menu placement was preferred by some users for its ease of control as the user could turn the menu on/off and place the menu at an angle comfortable to them. We identify the strengths and weaknesses of each placement type and present some implications for future design in this space.