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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This work presents the results of a comparative study in which we investigate the ways manipulation of physical versus digital media are fundamentally different from one another. Participants carried out both a puzzle task and a photo sorting task in two different modes: in a physical 3-dimensional space and on a multi-touch, interactive tabletop in which the digital items resembled their physical counterparts in terms of appearance and behavior. By observing the interaction behaviors of 12 participants, we explore the main differences and discuss what this means for designing interactive surfaces which use aspects of the physical world as a design resource. Bare hand pointing on touch screens both benefits and suffers from the nature of direct input. This work explores techniques to overcome its limitations. Our goal is to design interaction tools allowing pixel level pointing in a fast and efficient manner. Based on several cycles of iterative design and testing, we propose two techniques: Cross-Keys that uses discrete taps on virtual keys integrated with a crosshair cursor, and an analog Precision-Handle that uses a leverage (gain) effect to amplify movement precision from the user's finger tip to the end cursor. We conducted a formal experiment with these two techniques, in addition to the previously known Zoom-Pointing and Take-Off as baseline anchors. Both subjective and performance measurements indicate that Precision-Handle and Cross-Keys complement existing techniques for touch screen interaction. This paper presents the design and evaluation of two interaction techniques used to navigate into large data collection displayed on a large output space while based on manipulations of a small physical artefact. The first technique exploits the spatial position of a digital camera and the second one uses its tactile screen. User experiments have been conducted to study and compare the both techniques, with regards to users' performance and satisfaction. Results establish that Tactile technique is more efficient than Tangible technique for easy pointing tasks while Tangible technique is better for hardest pointing tasks. In addition, users' feedback shows that they prefer to use the tangible camera, which requires fewer skills. Three studies were conducted comparing speed of performance, error rates and user preference ratings for three selection devices. The devices tested were a touchscreen, a touchscreen with stabilization (stabilization software filters and smooths raw data from hardware), and a mouse. The task was the selection of rectangular targets 1, 4, 16 and 32 pixels per side (0·4 × 0·6, 1·7 × 2·2, 6·9 × 9·0, 13·8 × 17·9 mm respectively). Touchscreen users were able to point at single pixel targets, thereby countering widespread expectations of poor touchscreen resolution. The results show no difference in performance between the mouse and touchscreen for targets ranging from 32 to 4 pixels per side. In addition, stabilization significantly reduced the error rates for the touchscreen when selecting small targets. These results imply that touchscreens, when properly used, have attractive advantages in selecting targets as small as 4 pixels per size (approximately one-quarter of the size of a single character). A variant of Fitts' Law is proposed to predict touchscreen pointing times. Ideas for future research are also presented. We explore the use of customizable tangible remote controllers for interacting with wall-size displays. Such controllers are especially suited to visual exploration tasks where users need to move to see details of complex visualizations. In addition, we conducted a controlled user study suggesting that tangibles make it easier for users to focus on the visual display while they interact. We explain how to build such controllers using off-the-shelf touch tablets and describe a sample application that supports multiple dynamic queries. Tabletop systems have become quite popular in recent years, during which there was considerable enthusiasm for the development of new interfaces. In this paper, we establish a comparison between touch and tangible interfaces. We set up an experiment involving several actions like translation and rotation. We recruited 40 participants to take part in a user study and we present our results with a discussion on the design of touch and tangible interfaces. Our contribution is an empirical study showing that overall, the tangible interface is much faster but under certain conditions, the touch interface could gain the upper hand. We investigate the differences -- in terms of bothquantitative performance and subjective preference -- between direct-touch and mouse input for unimanual andbimanual tasks on tabletop displays. The results of twoexperiments show that for bimanual tasks performed ontabletops, users benefit from direct-touch input. However,our results also indicate that mouse input may be moreappropriate for a single user working on tabletop tasksrequiring only single-point interaction.