Escaping the Valley of Boredom: Efficient User Resizing in Virtual Reality
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2026 |
| Type | Paper in proceedings |
| Conference | CHI EA '26: Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| web | https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772363.3799288 |
| Doi | https://doi.org/10.1145/3772363.3799288 |
| Keywords | virtual reality; locomotion; cybersickness; multiscale navigation; player resizing |
| Description | Resizing the user’s virtual representation in virtual reality (grow-shrink) can support rapid traversal, overview, and size-dependent interaction. However, the transition between scales introduces risks of sensory conflict and motion sickness. We conducted a within-subjects user study (N=15) to evaluate the effects of transition duration and preparedness on user comfort and preference. Results indicate that in our sample neither option significantly increases motion sickness, suggesting that this technique is a viable alternative to common locomotion methods. However, we identified a strong “Efficiency Bias”: users consistently preferred sub-second transitions over “cinematic” slow transitions (10s). Our findings suggest a Valley of Boredom for intermediate transition durations (2–5s), leading to design guidelines that prioritize either instantaneous “Snap” scaling for efficiency or slow “Glide” scaling for accessibility, while avoiding the uncomfortable middle spectrum. |