Improving Effective Throughput Performance using Auditory Feedback in Virtual Reality

During the complex process of motor skill acquisition, novices might focus on different criteria, such as speed or accuracy, in their training. Previous research on virtual reality (VR) has shown that effective throughput could also be used as an assessment criterion. Effective throughput combines speed, accuracy, and precision into one measure, and can be influenced by auditory feedback. This paper investigates through a user study how to improve participants’ effective throughput performance using auditory feedback. In the study, we mapped the speed and accuracy of the participants to the pitch of the auditory error feedback in an ISO 9241-411 multidirectional pointing task and evaluated participants’ performance. The results showed it is possible to regulate the time or accuracy performance of the participants and thus the effective throughput. Based on the findings of our work, we also identify that effective throughput is an appropriate assessment criterion for VR systems. We hope that our results can be used for VR applications.