Design and Evaluation of Gravity's Grip: A VR-based Educational Tool Designed for Novice Users

Virtual Reality (VR) has progressed from an emerging concept to a pivotal technology in numerous domains, including education. This paper examines “Gravity's Grip,” an educational VR application designed to instruct 8th to 12th grade students about the gravitational forces on Mars, Jupiter, and Venus in comparison to Earth, as part of a local planetarium's educational initiative. Utilizing common objects, users engage in activities such as propelling and releasing objects to observe gravitational variations between Earth and the selected planets. Developed for the Meta Quest 2, this study involved ten novice VR users participating in think-aloud sessions to assess usability and engagement. The findings indicate that subtle visual cues and off- center content were frequently missed, resulting in confusion. However, sequential interaction design, multimodal feedback, and the use of familiar objects significantly enhanced comprehension and ease of use. The immersive first-person perspective, augmented with integrated audio, visual, and tactile feedback, substantially boosted user engagement and curiosity.