Investigating the Performance of Gesture-Based Input for Mid-Air Text Entry in a Virtual Environment: A Comparison of Hand-Up versus Hand-Down Postures

Although the interaction technology for virtual reality (VR) systems has evolved significantly over the past years, the text input efficiency in the virtual environment is still an ongoing problem. We deployed a word-gesture text entry technology based on gesture recognition in the virtual environment. This study aimed to investigate the performance of the word-gesture text entry technology with different input postures and VR experiences in the virtual environment. The study revealed that the VR experience (how long or how often using VR) had little effect on input performance. The hand-up posture has a better input performance when using word-gesture text entry technology in a virtual environment. In addition, the study found that the perceived exertion to complete the text input with word-gesture text entry technology was relatively high. Furthermore, the typing accuracy and perceived usability for using the hand-up posture were obviously higher than that for the hand-down posture. The hand-up posture also had less task workload than the hand-down posture. This paper supports that the word-gesture text entry technology with hand-up posture has greater application potential than hand-down posture.