Grab It, While You Can: A VR Gesture Evaluation of a Co-Designed Traditional Narrative by Indigenous People

Recent developments in Virtual Reality (VR) applications, such as hand gesture tracking, provide new opportunities to create embodied user experiences. Numerous gesture elicitation studies have been conducted. However, in most instances they lack validation of implemented gestures, as well diversity of participant groups. Our research explores the digitalization of intangible cultural heritage in collaboration with one of the San tribes in Southern Africa. The focus is on particular gestures as embodied interactions of a VR implementation of a traditional San hunting story. In this paper, we present a gesture study, which entails an in-situ elicitation of natural gestures, a co-designed integration, a VR story implementation with grasping and three mid-air gestures, and a user evaluation. Based on our findings, we discuss the anthropological value of gesture implementations determined by an indigenous community, the local usability of a grasping gesture, and in-VR gesture elicitation, as an extension of existing methods.