Usability related human errors in a collaborative immersive VR environment

The aim of the article is to describe the nature of usability issues in a new virtual environment designed for collaboration through an information-based task. The virtual environment models a collaborative problem space of scheduling a two-day trip for students in a tourist office. Usability issues are analyzed within the framework of James Reason´s where errors observed are interpreted as rule-based mistakes, i.e. the false application of rules from the physical world in the virtual reality. The issues observed qualitatively on video recordings reveal that these rule-based errors of usability in the 3D cave are related to the lack of feedback. Participants fail to seize an object because they do not “feel” that they reached it unless they have something similar to tactile feedback. Other mistakes in usability are related to typing in the 3D cave which is connected to previous findings about the immersion breaking nature of typing. Those findings implicate that the virtual reality cave as a user interface should induce applicable rules. It would be another solution to fit this interface to the rules of the real world by implementing new feedback channels replacing tactile and postural information.