Design guidelines for intuitive virtual reality authoring tools

Abstract

Virtual reality (VR) experiences are frequently developed using game en gines, which are difficult for unskilled professionals who lack programming and 3D modeling skills. Concurrently, there is a knowledge gap in software project design for intuitive VR authoring tools, which were intended to be more user-friendly. Frequently, these authoring tools are inadequate due to a lack of standardized operating procedures. This study contributes to the development of more intuitive VR authoring tools and the evalua tion of existing ones by proposing design guidelines. We adopted the De sign Science Research paradigm, which consists of the following six steps: (1) problem identification, (2) solution objective definition, (3) design and development, (4) demonstration, (5) evaluation, and (6) communication. Following these steps the study identified the complexity in VR authoring tools due to the lack of ontologies, defined the solution of proposing design guidelines, developed a Systematic Literature Review following PRISMA, demonstrated a guidelines’ proof-of-concept to experts, evaluated the gui delines by experimenting an example authoring tool and communicated the findings as a review and an article. As results, fourteen papers were reviewed and fourteen design guidelines were compiled for requirements and features, including Visual Programming, Immersive Authoring, Sha ring and Collaboration, and Movement Freedom, among others. Next, we evaluated the validity of the design guidelines, and the results indicated that they may be useful for assisting with the evaluation of intuitiveness in VR authoring tools and promoting the creation of other intuitive tools. In addition, they can support the growth of the metaverse, as virtual con tent creation is one of its pillars, as well as contribute to the creation of standard concepts for the area, creating in another words, ontologies.