Enhancing VR Experiences with Smartwatch Data

Nowadays, smartwatches are widely used on a daily basis by a growing user base. They can constantly collect motion and health related data via different sensors such as accelerometer or heart rate sensors. This data offers new possibilities for designing VR experiences, interacting within VR, or enhancing a VR experience by adjusting it to its users. In this workshop paper, we explore the design space of smartwatch-gathered data for VR, focusing on how menu navigation can be facilitated by motion data for mid-air gestures and by the smartwatch’s screen for touch-based gestures, and how health data can be used to automatically adjust the VE to encourage a relaxation of one’s HR, and to reflect or counteract the user’s predicted mood.