Precueing Compound Tasks in Virtual and Augmented Reality

This paper addresses the challenge of determining the quantity and composition of visual task cues for effective precueing in virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications. AR and VR can seamlessly overlay additional visual information to help people improve work efficiently and reduce errors while working through the steps of procedures, but the effectiveness of such task assistance depends on the presentation format and amount of information given. Prior research has found benefits of supplemental visual cues for giving future hints for upcoming steps in procedural tasks, though many experiments have predominantly focused on simplified tasks, which leaves a gap in our understanding of the potential for mixed reality to guide users for compound tasks and instructions. We present an experiment assessing different visual cues in VR to test a user's ability to harness distinct precueing information streams separating cues for object search and object placement for multi-step procedures. The results demonstrate that when users complete compound tasks involving multiple types of subtasks and instructions that combine different types of information, users are not able to take advantage of information about future steps for effective precueing. However, the addition of even simple interaction cues significantly improved task performance for both time and errors.