The Effect of Haptic Cues on Working Memory in 3D Menu Selection

We investigated the effect of haptic cues on working memory in 3D menu selection. We conducted a 3D menu selection task in two different conditions: visual only and visual with haptic. For the visual condition, participants were instructed to select 3D menu items and memorize the order of selection. For the visual with haptic condition, we used magnetic haptic effect on each 3D menu item. Results showed that participants needed less number of trials for memorizing the selection sequence in visual with haptic condition than in visual only condition. Subjective data, collected from a questionnaire, indicated that visual with haptic condition was more suitable for selection and memorization

Human factors in instructional augmented reality for intravehicular spaceflight activities and How gravity influences the setup of interfaces operated by direct object selection

In human spaceflight, advanced user interfaces are becoming an interesting mean to facilitate human-machine interaction, enhancing and guaranteeing the sequences of intravehicular space operations. The efforts made to ease such operations have shown strong interests in novel human-computer interaction like Augmented Reality (AR). The work presented in this thesis is directed towards a user-driven design for AR-assisted space operations, iteratively solving issues arisen from the problem space, which also includes the consideration of the effect of altered gravity on handling such interfaces.Auch in der bemannten Raumfahrt steigt das Interesse an neuartigen Benutzerschnittstellen, um nicht nur die Mensch-Maschine-Interaktion effektiver zu gestalten, sondern auch um einen korrekten Arbeitsablauf sicherzustellen. In der Vergangenheit wurden wiederholt Anstrengungen unternommen, Innenbordarbeiten mit Hilfe von Augmented Reality (AR) zu erleichtern. Diese Arbeit konzentriert sich auf einen nutzerorientierten AR-Ansatz, welcher zum Ziel hat, die Probleme schrittweise in einem iterativen Designprozess zu lösen. Dies erfordert auch die Berücksichtigung veränderter Schwerkraftbedingungen

A user interface for terrain modelling in virtual reality using a head mounted display

The increased commercial availability of virtual reality (VR) devices has resulted in more content being created for virtual environments (VEs). This content creation has mainly taken place using traditional desktop systems but certain applications are now integrating VR into the creation pipeline. Therefore we look at the effectiveness of creating content, specifically designing terrains, for use in immersive environments using VR technology. To do this, we develop a VR interface for terrain creation based on an existing desktop application. The interface incorporates a head-mounted display and 6 degree of freedom controllers. This allows the mapping of user controls to more natural movements compared to the abstract controls in mouse and keyboard based systems. It also means that users can view the terrain in full 3D due to the inherent stereoscopy of the VR display. The interface goes through three iterations of user centred design and testing. This results in paper and low fidelity prototypes being created before the final interface is developed. The performance of this final VR interface is then compared to the desktop interface on which it was based. We carry out user tests to assess the performance of each interface in terms of speed, accuracy and usability. From our results we find that there is no significant difference between the interfaces when it comes to accuracy but that the desktop interface is superior in terms of speed while the VR interface was rated as having higher usability. Some of the possible reasons for these results, such as users preferring the natural interactions offered by the VR interface but not having sufficient training to fully take advantage of it, are discussed. Finally, we conclude that while it was not shown that either interface is clearly superior, there is certainly room for further exploration of this research area. Recommendations for how to incorporate lessons learned during the creation of this dissertation into any further research are also made

Measuring user experience for virtual reality

In recent years, Virtual Reality (VR) and 3D User Interfaces (3DUI) have seen a drastic increase in popularity, especially in terms of consumer-ready hardware and software. These technologies have the potential to create new experiences that combine the advantages of reality and virtuality. While the technology for input as well as output devices is market ready, only a few solutions for everyday VR - online shopping, games, or movies - exist, and empirical knowledge about performance and user preferences is lacking. All this makes the development and design of human-centered user interfaces for VR a great challenge. This thesis investigates the evaluation and design of interactive VR experiences. We introduce the Virtual Reality User Experience (VRUX) model based on VR-specific external factors and evaluation metrics such as task performance and user preference. Based on our novel UX evaluation approach, we contribute by exploring the following directions: shopping in virtual environments, as well as text entry and menu control in the context of everyday VR. Along with this, we summarize our findings by design spaces and guidelines for choosing optimal interfaces and controls in VR.In den letzten Jahren haben Virtual Reality (VR) und 3D User Interfaces (3DUI) stark an Popularität gewonnen, insbesondere bei Hard- und Software im Konsumerbereich. Diese Technologien haben das Potenzial, neue Erfahrungen zu schaffen, die die Vorteile von Realität und Virtualität kombinieren. Während die Technologie sowohl für Eingabe- als auch für Ausgabegeräte marktreif ist, existieren nur wenige Lösungen für den Alltag in VR - wie Online-Shopping, Spiele oder Filme - und es fehlt an empirischem Wissen über Leistung und Benutzerpräferenzen. Dies macht die Entwicklung und Gestaltung von benutzerzentrierten Benutzeroberflächen für VR zu einer großen Herausforderung. Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit der Evaluation und Gestaltung von interaktiven VR-Erfahrungen. Es wird das Virtual Reality User Experience (VRUX)- Modell eingeführt, das auf VR-spezifischen externen Faktoren und Bewertungskennzahlen wie Leistung und Benutzerpräferenz basiert. Basierend auf unserem neuartigen UX-Evaluierungsansatz leisten wir einen Beitrag, indem wir folgende interaktive Anwendungsbereiche untersuchen: Einkaufen in virtuellen Umgebungen sowie Texteingabe und Menüsteuerung im Kontext des täglichen VR. Die Ergebnisse werden außerdem mittels Richtlinien zur Auswahl optimaler Schnittstellen in VR zusammengefasst

VRChem: Virtuaalitodellisuuteen perustuva molekyylimallinnusohjelmisto

Understanding the often complex atomic-level three-dimensional structure of molecules and materials is crucial in chemistry,and many tools have been designed and created to help chemists visualize and examine these structures. Currently, the most popular tool is molecular modeling software designed for desktop computers. The 2D-representations of molecules these applications render, however, are not ideal for studying the three-dimensional structure, and better tools with support for true stereoscopic molecular 3D-representation are needed. For this purpose, we have created VRChem, a novel molecular modeling application for Virtual Reality featuring a modern 3D user interface. With VRChem and the necessary hardware, users can construct and modify molecules in a virtual reality environment using their bare hands. This thesis covers the development and technical details of the VRChem application and what is being planned for future versions. VRChem is built on the Unity game engine for multi-platform support and it has thus far been an adequate platform for the application. The current version was built as a prototype for user interface testing and is not suitable for professional or research use, but the planned updates, such as improved graphical user interfaces, performance optimizations and more accurate energy minimization methods could make it a functional application in the future.Molekyylien ja materiaalien usein monimutkaisen atomirakenteen ymmärtäminen on äärimmäisen tärkeää kemiallisessa tutkimuksessa ja reaktioiden suunnittelussa. Tätä tehtävää varten onkin luotu useita työkaluja, joiden avulla voidaan mallintaa kemiallisia rakenteita, tutkia niiden reaktiivisuutta ja suunnitella halutun rakenteen luomista. Nykyaikana käytetyimmät mallinnustyökalut ovat tietokoneohjelmistoja, joita käytetään hiirellä ja näppäimistöllä ja joka piirtää kuvaa rakenteesta tavalliselle tietokoneen näytölle. Valitettavasti näyttöpäätteen kaksiuloitteisesta kuvasta johtuen kemiallisten yhdisteiden rakenteiden kolmiuloitteisuus, jolla on suuri merkitys reaktiivisuuteen, on tietyissä tilanteissa vaikea hahmottaa. Tästä syystä alalla olisi kysyntää työkaluille, jotka kykenisivät tarkempaan 3D-rakenteen visualisointiin. Kehittämämme VRChem-ohjelma on virtuaalitodellisuuteen perustuva stereoskooppinen molekyylimallinnusohjelma, joka kykenee erittäin realistiseen kolmioloitteiseen molekyylien visualisointiin ja niiden muokkaamiseen käyttäjän omin käsin, myös ilman käsissä pidettäviä ohjaimia. Tämä diplomityö käsittelee VRChem-ohjelman kehitystyötä ja teknistä toteutusta, ja kuinka ohjelmiston kehitystä voitaisiin jatkaa paremman kokemuksen tarjoamiseksi. VRChem on kehitetty Unity-pelimoottorin avulla, ja sen nykyinen prototyyppiversio on täysin toimiva kokonaisuus, jota on käytetty käyttäjäkokeissa virtuaalitodellisuuden hyödyllisyyden tutkimiseksi. Ohjelma ei ole valmis käytettäväksi kemiallisessa tutkimuksessa tai opetuksessa, mutta suunnitellut ominaisuus- ja suorituskykyparannukset voivat tulevaisuudessa tehdä tästä mahdollista

The cockpit for the 21st century

Interactive surfaces are a growing trend in many domains. As one possible manifestation of Mark Weiser’s vision of ubiquitous and disappearing computers in everywhere objects, we see touchsensitive screens in many kinds of devices, such as smartphones, tablet computers and interactive tabletops. More advanced concepts of these have been an active research topic for many years. This has also influenced automotive cockpit development: concept cars and recent market releases show integrated touchscreens, growing in size. To meet the increasing information and interaction needs, interactive surfaces offer context-dependent functionality in combination with a direct input paradigm. However, interfaces in the car need to be operable while driving. Distraction, especially visual distraction from the driving task, can lead to critical situations if the sum of attentional demand emerging from both primary and secondary task overextends the available resources. So far, a touchscreen requires a lot of visual attention since its flat surface does not provide any haptic feedback. There have been approaches to make direct touch interaction accessible while driving for simple tasks. Outside the automotive domain, for example in office environments, concepts for sophisticated handling of large displays have already been introduced. Moreover, technological advances lead to new characteristics for interactive surfaces by enabling arbitrary surface shapes. In cars, two main characteristics for upcoming interactive surfaces are largeness and shape. On the one hand, spatial extension is not only increasing through larger displays, but also by taking objects in the surrounding into account for interaction. On the other hand, the flatness inherent in current screens can be overcome by upcoming technologies, and interactive surfaces can therefore provide haptically distinguishable surfaces. This thesis describes the systematic exploration of large and shaped interactive surfaces and analyzes their potential for interaction while driving. Therefore, different prototypes for each characteristic have been developed and evaluated in test settings suitable for their maturity level. Those prototypes were used to obtain subjective user feedback and objective data, to investigate effects on driving and glance behavior as well as usability and user experience. As a contribution, this thesis provides an analysis of the development of interactive surfaces in the car. Two characteristics, largeness and shape, are identified that can improve the interaction compared to conventional touchscreens. The presented studies show that large interactive surfaces can provide new and improved ways of interaction both in driver-only and driver-passenger situations. Furthermore, studies indicate a positive effect on visual distraction when additional static haptic feedback is provided by shaped interactive surfaces. Overall, various, non-exclusively applicable, interaction concepts prove the potential of interactive surfaces for the use in automotive cockpits, which is expected to be beneficial also in further environments where visual attention needs to be focused on additional tasks.Der Einsatz von interaktiven Oberflächen weitet sich mehr und mehr auf die unterschiedlichsten Lebensbereiche aus. Damit sind sie eine mögliche Ausprägung von Mark Weisers Vision der allgegenwärtigen Computer, die aus unserer direkten Wahrnehmung verschwinden. Bei einer Vielzahl von technischen Geräten des täglichen Lebens, wie Smartphones, Tablets oder interaktiven Tischen, sind berührungsempfindliche Oberflächen bereits heute in Benutzung. Schon seit vielen Jahren arbeiten Forscher an einer Weiterentwicklung der Technik, um ihre Vorteile auch in anderen Bereichen, wie beispielsweise der Interaktion zwischen Mensch und Automobil, nutzbar zu machen. Und das mit Erfolg: Interaktive Benutzeroberflächen werden mittlerweile serienmäßig in vielen Fahrzeugen eingesetzt. Der Einbau von immer größeren, in das Cockpit integrierten Touchscreens in Konzeptfahrzeuge zeigt, dass sich diese Entwicklung weiter in vollem Gange befindet. Interaktive Oberflächen ermöglichen das flexible Anzeigen von kontextsensitiven Inhalten und machen eine direkte Interaktion mit den Bildschirminhalten möglich. Auf diese Weise erfüllen sie die sich wandelnden Informations- und Interaktionsbedürfnisse in besonderem Maße. Beim Einsatz von Bedienschnittstellen im Fahrzeug ist die gefahrlose Benutzbarkeit während der Fahrt von besonderer Bedeutung. Insbesondere visuelle Ablenkung von der Fahraufgabe kann zu kritischen Situationen führen, wenn Primär- und Sekundäraufgaben mehr als die insgesamt verfügbare Aufmerksamkeit des Fahrers beanspruchen. Herkömmliche Touchscreens stellen dem Fahrer bisher lediglich eine flache Oberfläche bereit, die keinerlei haptische Rückmeldung bietet, weshalb deren Bedienung besonders viel visuelle Aufmerksamkeit erfordert. Verschiedene Ansätze ermöglichen dem Fahrer, direkte Touchinteraktion für einfache Aufgaben während der Fahrt zu nutzen. Außerhalb der Automobilindustrie, zum Beispiel für Büroarbeitsplätze, wurden bereits verschiedene Konzepte für eine komplexere Bedienung großer Bildschirme vorgestellt. Darüber hinaus führt der technologische Fortschritt zu neuen möglichen Ausprägungen interaktiver Oberflächen und erlaubt, diese beliebig zu formen. Für die nächste Generation von interaktiven Oberflächen im Fahrzeug wird vor allem an der Modifikation der Kategorien Größe und Form gearbeitet. Die Bedienschnittstelle wird nicht nur durch größere Bildschirme erweitert, sondern auch dadurch, dass Objekte wie Dekorleisten in die Interaktion einbezogen werden können. Andererseits heben aktuelle Technologieentwicklungen die Restriktion auf flache Oberflächen auf, so dass Touchscreens künftig ertastbare Strukturen aufweisen können. Diese Dissertation beschreibt die systematische Untersuchung großer und nicht-flacher interaktiver Oberflächen und analysiert ihr Potential für die Interaktion während der Fahrt. Dazu wurden für jede Charakteristik verschiedene Prototypen entwickelt und in Testumgebungen entsprechend ihres Reifegrads evaluiert. Auf diese Weise konnten subjektives Nutzerfeedback und objektive Daten erhoben, und die Effekte auf Fahr- und Blickverhalten sowie Nutzbarkeit untersucht werden. Diese Dissertation leistet den Beitrag einer Analyse der Entwicklung von interaktiven Oberflächen im Automobilbereich. Weiterhin werden die Aspekte Größe und Form untersucht, um mit ihrer Hilfe die Interaktion im Vergleich zu herkömmlichen Touchscreens zu verbessern. Die durchgeführten Studien belegen, dass große Flächen neue und verbesserte Bedienmöglichkeiten bieten können. Außerdem zeigt sich ein positiver Effekt auf die visuelle Ablenkung, wenn zusätzliches statisches, haptisches Feedback durch nicht-flache Oberflächen bereitgestellt wird. Zusammenfassend zeigen verschiedene, untereinander kombinierbare Interaktionskonzepte das Potential interaktiver Oberflächen für den automotiven Einsatz. Zudem können die Ergebnisse auch in anderen Bereichen Anwendung finden, in denen visuelle Aufmerksamkeit für andere Aufgaben benötigt wird

Making Spatial Information Accessible on Touchscreens for Users who are Blind and Visually Impaired

Touchscreens have become a de facto standard of input for mobile devices as they most optimally use the limited input and output space that is imposed by their form factor. In recent years, people who are blind and visually impaired have been increasing their usage of smartphones and touchscreens. Although basic access is available, there are still many accessibility issues left to deal with in order to bring full inclusion to this population. One of the important challenges lies in accessing and creating of spatial information on touchscreens. The work presented here provides three new techniques, using three different modalities, for accessing spatial information on touchscreens. The first system makes geometry and diagram creation accessible on a touchscreen through the use of text-to-speech and gestural input. This first study is informed by a qualitative study of how people who are blind and visually impaired currently access and create graphs and diagrams. The second system makes directions through maps accessible using multiple vibration sensors without any sound or visual output. The third system investigates the use of binaural sound on a touchscreen to make various types of applications accessible such as physics simulations, astronomy, and video games

3-D Interfaces for Spatial Construction

It is becoming increasingly easy to bring the body directly to digital form via stereoscopic immersive displays and tracked input devices. Is this space a viable one in which to construct 3d objects? Interfaces built upon two-dimensional displays and 2d input devices are the current standard for spatial construction, yet 3d interfaces, where the dimensionality of the interactive space matches that of the design space, have something unique to offer. This work increases the richness of 3d interfaces by bringing several new tools into the picture: the hand is used directly to trace surfaces; tangible tongs grab, stretch, and rotate shapes; a handle becomes a lightsaber and a tool for dropping simple objects; and a raygun, analagous to the mouse, is used to select distant things. With these tools, a richer 3d interface is constructed in which a variety of objects are created by novice users with relative ease. What we see is a space, not exactly like the traditional 2d computer, but rather one in which a distinct and different set of operations is easy and natural. Design studies, complemented by user studies, explore the larger space of three-dimensional input possibilities. The target applications are spatial arrangement, freeform shape construction, and molecular design. New possibilities for spatial construction develop alongside particular nuances of input devices and the interactions they support. Task-specific tangible controllers provide a cultural affordance which links input devices to deep histories of tool use, enhancing intuition and affective connection within an interface. On a more practical, but still emotional level, these input devices frame kinesthetic space, resulting in high-bandwidth interactions where large amounts of data can be comfortably and quickly communicated. A crucial issue with this interface approach is the tension between specific and generic input devices. Generic devices are the tradition in computing -- versatile, remappable, frequently bereft of culture or relevance to the task at hand. Specific interfaces are an emerging trend -- customized, culturally rich, to date these systems have been tightly linked to a single application, limiting their widespread use. The theoretical heart of this thesis, and its chief contribution to interface research at large is an approach to customization. Instead of matching an application domain's data, each new input device supports a functional class. The spatial construction task is split into four types of manipulation: grabbing, pointing, holding, and rubbing. Each of these action classes spans the space of spatial construction, allowing a single tool to be used in many settings without losing the unique strengths of its specific form. Outside of 3d interface, outside of spatial construction, this approach strikes a balance between generic and specific suitable for many interface scenarios. In practice, these specific function groups are given versatility via a quick remapping technique which allows one physical tool to perform many digital tasks. For example, the handle can be quickly remapped from a lightsaber that cuts shapes to tools that place simple platonic solids, erase portions of objects, and draw double-helices in space. The contributions of this work lie both in a theoretical model of spatial interaction, and input devices (combined with new interactions) which illustrate the efficacy of this philosophy. This research brings the new results of Tangible User Interface to the field of Virtual Reality. We find a space, in and around the hand, where full-fledged haptics are not necessary for users physically connect with digital form.</p