We evaluate the performance and usability of mouse-based, touch-based, and tangible interaction for manipulating objects in a 3D virtual environment. This comparison is a step toward a better understanding of the limitations and benefits of these existing interaction techniques, with the ultimate goal of facilitating the integration of different 3D data exploration environments into a single interaction continuum. For this purpose we analyze participants' performance in 3D manipulation using a docking task. We measured completion times, docking precision, as well as subjective criteria such as fatigue, workload, and preference. Our results show that the three input modalities provide similar levels of precision but require different interaction times. We also discuss our qualitative observations as well as people's preferences and put our findings into context of the practical application domain of 3D data analysis environments.
Most of the comparative studies also focus on comparing either mouse and touch interaction techniques or tangible and touch (and many of these do that for 2D tasks). The literature indeed contains many papers comparing touch and mouse input for a whole variety of tasks and a whole variety of parameters: speed @cite_25 @cite_24 , error rate @cite_25 @cite_24 , minimum target size @cite_36 , etc. Similarly, much research has compared touch-based with tangible interaction for tasks as various as puzzle solving @cite_18 @cite_33 , layout-creation @cite_50 , photo-sorting @cite_18 , selecting pointing @cite_1 , and tracking @cite_0 . Most of the work comparing tangible interfaces to other interfaces builds on the assumption that physical interfaces, because they mimick the real world, are necessarily better. However, this assumption was rightfully questioned by @cite_18 . A 2DOF input device such as a mouse may, in fact, perform well in a 3D manipulation task due to its inherent precision or people's familiarity with it. To better understand advantages and challenges of the three mentioned input modalities, we thus compare them with each other in a single study.
@cite_18 @cite_33 @cite_36 @cite_1 @cite_24 @cite_0 @cite_50 @cite_25
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Given the ease that humans have with using a keyboard and mouse in typical, non-colocated computer interaction, many studies have investigated the value of colocating the visual field and motor workspaces using immersive display modalities. Significant understanding has been gained by previous work comparing physical tasks against virtual tasks, visuomotor colocation versus non-colocation, and even visuomotor rotational misalignments in virtual environments (VEs). However, few studies have explored all of these paradigms in context with each other, and it is difficult to perform interstudy comparisons because of the variation in tested motor tasks. Therefore, using a stereoscopic fish tank display setup, the goal for the current study was to characterize human performance of a 3D Fitts' point-to-point reaching task using a stylus-based haptic interface in the physical, colocated non-colocated, and rotated VE visualization conditions. Five performance measures---throughput, efficiency, initial movement error, corrective movements, and peak velocity---were measured and used to evaluate task performance. These measures were studied in 22 subjects (11 male, 11 female, ages 20--32) performing a 3D variant of Fitts' serial task under 10 task conditions: physical, colocated VE, non-colocated VE, and rotated VEs from 45---315° in 45° increments. Hypotheses: All performance measures in the colocated VE were expected to reflect significantly reduced task performance over the real condition, but also reflect increased performance over the non-colocated VE condition. For rotational misalignments, all performance measures were expected to reflect the highest performance at 0°, reduce to the lowest performance at 90°, and rise again to a local maximum at 180° (symmetric about 0°). Results: All performance measures showed that the colocated VE condition resulted in significantly lower task performance than the physical condition and higher mean performance than the non-colocated VE condition, but the difference was not statistically significant. Also, rotation misalignments showed that task performance was mostly reduced to a minimum at 90°, 135°, and 225°. We conclude that colocated VEs may not significantly improve point-to-point reaching performance over non-colocated VEs. Also, visual rotations of ±45° affected throughput, efficiency, peak velocity, and initial movement error, but the number of corrective movements were not affected until ± 90°. We present an experimental comparison of multi-touch and tangible user interfaces for basic interface actions. Twelve participants completed manipulation and acquisition tasks on an interactive surface in each of three conditions: tangible user interface; multi-touch; and mouse and puck. We found that interface control objects in the tangible condition were easiest to acquire and, once acquired, were easier more accurate to manipulate. Further qualitative analysis suggested that in the evaluated tasks tangibles offer greater adaptability of control and specifically highlighted a problem of exit error that can undermine fine-grained control in multi-touch interactions. We discuss the implications of these findings for interface design. User performance with a tabletop display was tested using touch-based and mouse-based interaction in a traditional pointing task. Dependent variables were throughput, error rate, and movement time. In a study with 12 participants, touch had a higher throughput with average of 5.53 bps compared to 3.83 bps for the mouse. Touch also had a lower movement time on average, with block means ranging from 403 ms to 1051 ms vs. 607 ms to 1323 ms with the mouse. Error rates were lower for the mouse at 2.1 , compared to 9.8 for touch. The high error rates using touch were attributed to problems in selecting small targets with the finger. It is argued that, overall, touch input is a preferred and efficient input technique for tabletop displays, but that more research is needed to improve touch selection of small targets. We report results from a formal user study of interactive 3D rotation using the mouse-driven Virtual Sphere and Arcball techniques, as well as multidimensional input techniques based on magnetic orientation sensors. MultidimensionaI input is often assumed to allow users to work quickly, but at the cost of precision, due to the instability of the hand moving in the open air. We show that, at least for the orientation matching task used in this experiment, users can take advantage of the integrated degrees of freedom provided by multidimensional input without necessarily sacrificing precision: using multidimensional input, users completed the experimental task up to 36 faster without any statistically detectable loss of accuracy. We also report detailed observations of common usability problems when first encountering the techniques. Our observations suggest some design issues for 3D input devices. For example, the physical form-factors of the 3D input device significantly influenced user acceptance of otherwise identical input sensors. The device should afford some tactile cues, so the user can feel its orientation without looking at it. In the absence of such cues, some test users were unsure of how to use the device.