involving 202 college students, found no significant gender differences in ... gender differences in attitudes and in involvement in computer careers. According to ...
Gender and Virtual Navigation: an Exploratory Study Carmelo Ardito, Maria Francesca Costabile, Rosa Lanzilotti Dipartimento di Informatica, Università di Bari, 70125 Bari, Italy
{ardito, costabile, lanzilotti}@di.uniba.it
ABSTRACT Gender issue in computer has captured the interest of many researchers in the last years. This paper reports a study that investigates people interaction with virtual environments. The study was carried out by observing a group of 50 users (22 males and 28 females) performing a set of predefined tasks during the interaction with a 3D representation of a virtual museum. At the end of the experimental session, a questionnaire was administered to all the participants. The analysis of the collected data reveals a very similar behavior of males and females, indicating that there is not any significant gender difference in this case.
Keywords Gender studies, interaction with virtual environments.
1. INTRODUCTION Gender issue has captured the interest of many computer science and social researchers since the early 1980s. Studies of gender differences in attitudes towards computer technology tend to focus on several areas including males’ and females’ interests in computers, their perceptions of computers, their level of confidence and self-efficacy when working with computers [15]. Several studies have shown that at all educational levels, males show more interest than females in learning about computers, find working with computers more enjoyable, and use computers much more than females [1, 13]. Other studies have examined the relationship between gender and perception of the usefulness of computer technologies. While Koohang found that male college students rated computers as more useful than did female students [9], Shashaani, in a study involving 202 college students, found no significant gender differences in the perceived usefulness of computers [14]; moreover, both men and women were aware that knowledge of computers is important for obtaining a job, saves time and work, and is useful for data processing and problem solving. Some research has also shown gender differences in computer use and activities. More males than females enrol in computer classes, Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. AVI '06, May 23-26, 2006, Venezia, Italy.
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especially in programming and in advanced computer courses. Other studies report that the most reliable predictors of gender differences in computer attitudes are related to prior computer knowledge and experiences [6, 15]. The debate about gender inequality in computer science has received significant input from researchers who recognize the importance of social and cultural environments in explaining gender differences in attitudes and in involvement in computer careers. According to advocates of socialization theory, men and women confront computers in different ways and with different perceptions, based on social expectations from significant other people, including parents, teachers, and peer groups [5, 8]. Parents’ beliefs and advices are perceived by the students as important factors in their selection of courses, and parental encouragement has a positive influence on both males’ and females’ attitudes towards computers. Many studies on gender differences have been performed in various application domains (e.g., games, e-learning, programming) [7, 17]. In particular, well-documented gender differences in people's ability to navigate and orient themselves in the real world are vastly investigated in computer-simulated virtual environments. With the advent of powerful desktop personal computers there has been a rapid increase in interest and use of virtual environment (VE) software for both work and leisure. There are several cognitive and other factors that may be important in using VEs. These include individual differences that may affect efficient use of VEs, the effectiveness of VE exploration, the features or cues that facilitate orientation during navigation through the VE. In general, it may be argued, however, that individuals who excel at visual-spatial tasks will perform better on navigation tasks since the latter may also require recollection and manipulation of visual-spatial information. Previous research has identified gender differences in spatial abilities, with males performing better on tasks involving mental rotation and spatial perception [10]. These results are consistent with those reported in [16], which showed that males generally perform better on “the Road Map Test” assessing spatial orientation, and in [4], which highlighted that males remember better a route traced by a moving dot in a test of topographic memory. Finally, Bever found that females learn a virtual maze more quickly than males [2]; instead Moffat et al., performing an analogous study, revealed that males are more rapid than females [11]. In this paper we describe an exploratory study that aims at investigating if there are differences between males and females in interacting with a web-based 3D representation of a museum.
2. THE EXPERIMENTAL EVALUATION Virtual environments (VEs) are becoming popular as media for training, modelling and entertaining. Different mechanisms have been introduced for facilitating the navigation in a VE, (i.e. guided tour, visual and audio cues, etc.). The main purpose of our study was to investigate if a music component may help users in VE navigation and content fruition. We then performed an experimental evaluation whose results relative to the music support are reported in [3]. Another specific interest in the experimental evaluation focuses on gender issues; the collected data have been analyzed in order to understand if there are difference between males and females when interacting with a 3D environment. The application used in the experiment was Einstein Tower, a VRML counterpart of the sun observatory built in Potsdam by Erich Mendelsohn. It was designed in 1997 for the “German Expressionism” exhibition at Palazzo Grassi [12]. A selection of works from the real exhibition is displayed in the research rooms and laboratories of the tower. For each painting, the visitors can ask for information, by clicking with the mouse on the corresponding image. Moreover, some words in the retrieved text link to other information, in the usual way provided by hypertextual tools. A set of virtual rooms is available in the Einstein Tower world. When the user enters in a room, some music starts playing and a text appears on the left side of the screen. The music component is a classic music piece univocally associated to a room and automatically activated each time the visitor enters it. When the visitor leaves a room to enter another scene not characterised by any interaction activity (i.e. going along a corridor or a staircase), the music goes off. Different fragments of musical compositions related to the expressionist period characterise specific rooms that are interaction areas for the user. The interface provides several visit styles. An automatic tour option drives the users through the rooms of the tower. Besides, the users can visit the exhibition at their own pace, going back and forth a predefined path, by clicking on the arrows placed below the virtual scene. They can use a free navigation mode too, using the arrow keys of their keyboard, or activate the building map and click over it to reach a specific location. Since the application topic was a little sophisticated, we selected on purpose participants who could get interested and motivated by it. They were 50 master and PhD students of Modern Art and History at the University of Bari, (22 males, 28 females). It was actually easier to find females than males in this context, who enjoyed participating in the study. Participants were required to fill in a questionnaire aimed at investigating their skills using computers and navigating in a VE. In the training session, participants used the guided tour option to visit all the rooms and all the exhibits of the virtual museum in a sequence. During the experiment the participants had to execute eight tasks each, which required to navigate in the VE for collecting various information. At the end of the experiment, participants filled in a questionnaire aimed at evaluating some aspects of the overall user experience. It required a general evaluation of the site with particular attention to ease of navigation, perceived sense of
direction, quality of the music, and user satisfaction. Two evaluators assisted in the experiment. The entire interaction was videotaped and data were automatically logged.
2.1 RESULTS A pre-test questionnaire investigated if participants had previously used virtual environments and their feeling about them. Collected data have confirmed that participants’ attitude towards VEs was homogenously distributed between males and females. The experimental sessions, consisting of two sets of four tasks each, addressed navigation performance. The following variables were used to evaluate performance. - Errors: average number of wrong answers per task. - Navigation speed: average time spent navigating through the virtual path per task. - Navigation steps: average number of clicks on the arrows to go forward and backward through the virtual path per task. Wrong answers accounted for some 12% of the experimental questions. Errors were homogeneously distributed among males and females. No significant effects emerged in navigation speed (females mean time = 20,42 sec; males mean time = 20,54 sec). Another analysis was performed on navigation steps, yielding once again no significant effect (females mean steps = 6,84; males mean steps = 6,65). Post-test aimed at investigating user experience in navigating in the web virtual museum; it consisted of several semantic differential scale questions. We asked participants if they believed that moving through the VE was difficult, boring, stressful, etc. We also required a general evaluation of the site. In particular we asked participants if they found the site enjoyable, relaxing, useful. Attention was also given to participants’ feeling towards the played music: was it nice, pleasant, amusing? No gender differences emerged with respect to the user experience with the web virtual museum and to the perception of the navigation task.
3. CONCLUSION Many studies reported in literature highlight gender differences in attitudes towards computer technology. Our study did not confirm these findings in the virtual environments domain. The experiment outcomes showed that there were not gender differences in attitudes, performance and user experience towards 3D environments. The work carried out was only an exploratory study, because the application topic was a little sophisticated, and we selected on purpose participants who could get interested and motivated by it (they were 50 master and PhD students of Modern Art and History). It would be useful in the future to investigate on more general VE applications (games, guided tours, etc.) involving participants diversified in age, culture, interests.
4. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The authors wish to thank Dr. Antonella De Angeli for her valuable contribution in analyzing experimental data and Dr. Fabio Pittarello for the discussions on the VE navigation issues.
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