Co-Design & Evaluation of Visual Interventions for Head Posture Correction in Virtual Reality Games

While virtual reality (VR) games offer immersive experiences, prolonged improper head posture during VR gaming sessions can cause neck discomfort and injuries. To address this issue, we prototyped a framework to detect instances of improper head posture and apply various visual interventions to correct them. After assessing the prototype’s usability in a co-design workshop with participants experienced in VR design and kinesiology, we refined the interventions in two main directions — using explicit visual indicators or employing implicit background changes. The refined interventions were subsequently tested in a controlled experiment involving a target selection task. The study results demonstrate that the interventions effectively helped participants maintain better head posture during VR gameplay compared to the control condition.