Design of virtual environment input devices for people with moderate to severe learning difficulties – a user-centred approach T Lannen 1 , D J Brown 1 and P J Standen 2 1 Department of Computing and Mathematics, The Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, England. 2 Division of Rehabilitation and Ageing, Queens Medical Centre, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, England tanja_lannen@hotmail.com, david.brown@ntu.ac.uk, P.Standen@nottingham.ac.uk 1 www.isrg.org.uk ABSTRACT This paper describes the continuation of research introduced in a previous paper: ‘Access to Virtual Learning Environments for People with Learning Difficulties’, presented by the Authors at ICDVRAT 2000 in Sardinia. The research stems from the development of virtual environments (VEs) for people with learning disabilities and findings of usability difficulties with the computer input devices. The first stage of the study, ‘understand and specify the context of use’, was achieved by conducting a Usability Context Analysis (UCA), which included an analysis of the user population, task and working environment review. The next stage, before proceeding to concept design, was to identify any existing computer input devices that satisfied the device requirements. No satisfactory match was found. Concept design generated many new concepts through the employment of concept generation methods, which were guided by the design specification. A concept selection matrix was then used to select the best concept against the device requirements. Evaluation of the chosen manufactured concept (VR1) followed. Objectives of this user-based assessment were to evaluate the usability of the new input system, to ascertain whether a User Centred Design methodology is a successful approach. The results of this study show that VR1 has greater usability than the more commonly used joystick and mouse for this user population. 1. INTRODUCTION Significant research has been conducted in the application of virtual environments (VEs) for people with learning difficulties. For example, the virtual city has been developed to teach independent living skills to this user population (Cobb et al, 1998). More recently, Rose et al have investigated the use of VEs in vocational training of people with learning difficulties (Rose et al, 2000). In this study, a preliminary evaluation of a virtual kitchen showed some positive transfer of training to a ‘real world’ kitchen test and provided clear justification for further development of this type of training. Research, which is rooted in developmental psychology theories, has indicated many benefits in the use of VEs for people with learning difficulties. For example, VEs: encourage active involvement in learning; avoid abstract thought; allow users to learn by making mistakes within a safe environment and provide access to previously inaccessible activities or places (Cromby et al, 1996). Further research in this area has highlighted usability difficulties with the computer input devices, which are used to perform the VE navigation and interaction tasks. For example, from an evaluation of the aforementioned virtual city, it was found that individuals differed in the amount of support required to use the input devices; joystick for navigation and mouse for interaction (Cobb et al, 1998). It was also stated that navigation was found to be one of the most difficult tasks to do. The purpose of the research described in this paper was to examine the control of VE navigation and interaction tasks for young people with moderate to Proc. 4 th Intl Conf. Disability, Virtual Reality & Assoc. Tech., Vesz prém, Hungary, 2002 2002 ICDVRAT/University of Reading, UK; ISBN 07 049 11 43 4 155