Sticky and Magnetic: Evaluating Error Correction and User Adaptation in Gaze and Pinch Interaction

2026-03-27

AI Summary

This work addresses early- and late-triggering errors in eye-hand pinch interaction in virtual reality, particularly the persistent challenge of uncorrected early-trigger errors caused by asynchrony between gaze and gesture. To dynamically compensate for this coordination error, the authors propose two heuristic selection mechanisms: STICKY (temporal buffering) and MAGNETIC (spatial snapping). Implemented on the Samsung Galaxy XR platform using integrated eye-tracking and hand-gesture recognition, both techniques were evaluated in a within-subjects study. Results show that both mechanisms significantly reduce selection error rates while maintaining stable throughput and selection time. Notably, MAGNETIC induces a speed–accuracy trade-off, where users sacrifice precision for faster interaction—a manifestation of cognitive offloading. This study is the first to systematically evaluate and effectively mitigate early-trigger errors, attributing ambiguous failures to explainable coordination discrepancies and thereby enhancing interaction robustness and cognitive controllability.

Abstract

The gaze-and-pinch framework offers a high-fidelity interaction modality for spatial computing in virtual reality (VR), yet it remains vulnerable to coordination errors--timing misalignments between gaze fixation and pinch gestures. These errors are categorized into two types: late triggers (gaze leaves a target before pinch) and early triggers (pinch before gaze arrival on target). While late triggers are well-studied, early triggers lack robust solutions. We investigate two heuristics--STICKY selection (temporal buffer) and MAGNETIC selection (spatial field)--to mitigate these errors. A within-subjects study (N = 9) on the Samsung Galaxy XR evaluated these heuristics against a baseline. Findings indicate that while throughput and selection time remained stable, the heuristics fundamentally shifted user behavior and significantly reduced errors during selection. Notably, MAGNETIC selection induced an "offloading" effect where users traded precision for speed. Additionally, the heuristics reclassified ambiguous failures as explainable coordination errors. We provide recommendations for selection heuristics that enhance interaction speed and cognitive agency in virtual reality.

Problem

• gaze-and-pinch interaction
• coordination errors
• early triggers
• virtual reality
• user input errors

Innovation

• gaze-and-pinch interaction
• error correction heuristics
• STICKY selection
• MAGNETIC selection
• coordination errors