Exploring the effects of force feedback on VR Keyboards with varying visual designs

Abstract

Virtual keyboards are important tools for efficient text entry in virtual reality (VR). Our everyday typing relies heavily on touch sensation, provided through tactile and kinesthetic (force) feedback. While tactile feedback has been explored for VR keyboards, the effects of force feedback, and its multimodal interaction with visual design elements of virtual keyboards, remain largely unexplored. This study investigated the effects of force feedback in combination with two fundamental visual elements – key dimensionality (2D vs. 3D) and visual keystroke feedback – on typing efficiency and user experience. Utilizing state-of-the-art kinesthetic gloves, a text entry experiment showed that 3D keys, force and visual feedback significantly improved typing accuracy, and visual feedback enhanced typing speed. Crucially, the study revealed significant and complex interaction effects between them on various aspects of user experience. These findings highlighted that the combined effect of multimodal cues on user experience is not simply additive. This work is one of the first to empirically explore the multimodal interaction of force feedback and visual GUI elements for VR text entry, which provides valuable insights for the design of efficient and user-friendly multimodal VR keyboards.