Abstract

Published reports suggest that males significantly outperform females in navigating virtual environments. A novel navigation technique reported in CHI 2001, when combined with a large display and wide field of view, appeared to reduce that gender bias. That work has been extended with two navigation studies in order to understand the finding under carefully controlled conditions. The first study replicated the finding that a wide field of view coupled with a large display benefits both male and female users and reduces gender bias. The second study suggested that wide fields of view on a large display were useful to females despite a more densely populated virtual world. Implications for design of virtual worlds and large displays are discussed. Specifically, women take a wider field of view to achieve similar virtual environment navigation performance to men.

Citations