Human-centered design of VR interface features to support mental workload and spatial cognition during collaboration tasks in manufacturing

Abstract Industry 5.0 revolution is prioritizing human-centricity and adapting technologies to augment shopfloor workers’ cognitive ergonomics. To provide a user-friendly, efficient virtual planning tool, virtual reality (VR) is adopted by the industry to provide a virtual work environment for layout planning, design reviews, and training use cases. However, the user interface (UI) of VR programs is not yet standardized for universal design, and thus causes issues such as difficult scalable technology adoption due to high mental workload. Creating intuitive and accessible interfaces is a key challenge in VR. As the complexity of VR platforms grows, it is vital that users can effectively explore and engage with them. Improved UI design may improve the whole user experience, making VR more accessible, scalable, and attractive to a larger audience. Navigation in a VR environment can impose a significant mental workload on users, affecting their cognitive capacities, including layout perception, navigation, attention for collaboration, and response/completion time. This study aims to identify and assess the UI design features of a virtual work environment for manufacturing regarding mental workload, spatial navigation, and performance-based evaluation for human centricity. Three design features of typical mini maps examples, which are extracted from the literature and the gamification industry, are portability, tangibility, and dimensionality. By identifying the association between design features and user navigation experience, we may observe patterns for broader VR user interface standardization that address human factors. This study employed a qualitative approach to assess five different prototypes of interactive map designs, categorized into three design features, involving both students and industry practitioners, and resulting in 114 valid data collection sessions in the prototype-based experiment. Reducing mental workloads in VR interfaces can increase efficiency and user satisfaction in Industry 5.0 through intentional use of specific design features—portability proved to have the most significant impact, consistently reducing mental, physical and temporal demands, and frustration, while simultaneously improving performance, layout perception, navigation, and collaborative efficacy. The study provides effective design feature identification, highlighting the importance of user-centric approaches in VR development for cognitive ergonomics.