Poster: Vibration as a wayfinding aid

There are several ways to guide users to a destination in a Virtual World, most of them inherited from real counterparts, and typically based on visual feedback. Although these aids are very useful in general, we want to avoid user's distractions from the main scene and visual cluttering that may occur when visual feedback for wayfinding is used. We present our work on a “vibrating belt”, a belt of motors that can be used as an orientation aid. We conducted a set of experiments that compared such device with a low cognitive load visual aid for wayfinding, and we have found our device as effective as the visual aids in our study. We believe this device could improve the user's performance and concentration on the main activities in the scene.