H-GOMS: a model for evaluating a virtual-hand interaction system in virtual environments

The virtual-hand interaction technique is a common input technique in virtual environments (VEs). The current application of virtual-hand interaction in VEs lacks specialized objective evaluation methods, making it difficult to establish a systematic functional goal orientation. To achieve a quantitative evaluation of the virtual-hand interaction system in VEs, we developed the modified evaluation method of goals, operators, methods, and selection rules (H-GOMS). The evaluation model contains five modules: analysis, decomposition, configuration, acquisition, and evaluation. To build the H-GOMS model, the relevant temporal parameters of operators in VEs were measured, and interactive rules were formulated for the configuration module. In addition to establishing the H-GOMS evaluation model, this paper demonstrates the development of a performance evaluation software (HI2ET) based on the Unity engine. We realized automatic retrieval and identification of the interactive behavior information from the software and applied the H-GOMS model algorithm for real-time visualization of the interactive process. The proposed method, with modeling of interactive tasks based on expert users, enables feasible and generally quantifiable performance evaluation for virtual-hand interaction systems in VEs.