The State of the Art of Spatial Interfaces for 3D Visualization

International audienceWe survey the state of the art of spatial interfaces for 3D visualization. Interaction techniques are crucial to data visualization processes and the visualization research community has been calling for more research on interaction for years. Yet, research papers focusing on interaction techniques, in particular for 3D visualization purposes, are not always published in visualization venues, sometimes making it challenging to synthesize the latest interaction and visualization results. We therefore introduce a taxonomy of interaction technique for 3D visualization. The taxonomy is organized along two axes: the primary source of input on the one hand and the visualization task they support on the other hand. Surveying the state of the art allows us to highlight specific challenges and missed opportunities for research in 3D visualization. In particular, we call for additional research in: (1) controlling 3D visualization widgets to help scientists better understand their data, (2) 3D interaction techniques for dissemination, which are under-explored yet show great promise for helping museum and science centers in their mission to share recent knowledge, and (3) developing new measures that move beyond traditional time and errors metrics for evaluating visualizations that include spatial interaction

3D Pointing with Everyday Devices: Speed, Occlusion, Fatigue

In recent years, display technology has evolved to the point where displays can be both non-stereoscopic and stereoscopic, and 3D environments can be rendered realistically on many types of displays. From movie theatres and shopping malls to conference rooms and research labs, 3D information can be deployed seamlessly. Yet, while 3D environments are commonly displayed in desktop settings, there are virtually no examples of interactive 3D environments deployed within ubiquitous environments, with the exception of console gaming. At the same time, immersive 3D environments remain - in users' minds - associated with professional work settings and virtual reality laboratories. An excellent opportunity for 3D interactive engagements is being missed not because of economic factors, but due to the lack of interaction techniques that are easy to use in ubiquitous, everyday environments. In my dissertation, I address the lack of support for interaction with 3D environments in ubiquitous settings by designing, implementing, and evaluating 3D pointing techniques that leverage a smartphone or a smartwatch as an input device. I show that mobile and wearable devices may be especially beneficial as input devices for casual use scenarios, where specialized 3D interaction hardware may be impractical, too expensive or unavailable. Such scenarios include interactions with home theatres, intelligent homes, in workplaces and classrooms, with movie theatre screens, in shopping malls, at airports, during conference presentations and countless other places and situations. Another contribution of my research is to increase the potential of mobile and wearable devices for efficient interaction at a distance. I do so by showing that such interactions are feasible when realized with the support of a modern smartphone or smartwatch. I also show how multimodality, when realized with everyday devices, expands and supports 3D pointing. In particular, I show how multimodality helps to address the challenges of 3D interaction: performance issues related to the limitations of the human motor system, interaction with occluded objects and related problem of perception of depth on non-stereoscopic screens, and user subjective fatigue, measured with NASA TLX as perceived workload, that results from providing spatial input for a prolonged time. I deliver these contributions by designing three novel 3D pointing techniques that support casual, "walk-up-and-use" interaction at a distance and are fully realizable using off-the-shelf mobile and wearable devices available today. The contributions provide evidence that democratization of 3D interaction can be realized by leveraging the pervasiveness of a device that users already carry with them: a smartphone or a smartwatch.4 month

Techniques d'interaction 'phygitales' pour l'exploration de systèmes informationnels complexes

Durant cette dernière décennie, la quantité de données numériques n'a cessé d'augmenter. Ces données provenant de l'Internet des Objets ou de smartphones permettent aux utilisateurs de comprendre et d'analyser leur santé, leur mode de vie ou encore leur consommation énergétique, et aux différentes institutions (villes, campus, promoteurs immobiliers) de gérer le flux de population, le trafic routier ou les pertes énergétiques dans les bâtiments administrés. Le domaine de la "ville intelligente" en tire particulièrement profit. Il est donc capital de mettre à disposition des visualisations interactives de ces données pour pouvoir faire émerger des connaissances et faciliter la prise de décision. Une approche récente propose de représenter ces données proches de l'objet qui les capte ou les produit. Cependant, ce domaine est encore assez récent et il reste de nombreux défis à explorer. Un des défis majeurs identifié par Thomas et collab. (Thomas et al., 2018) est le développement et la conception de techniques d'interaction pour faciliter l'analyse de données situées. L'objectif de nos travaux de thèse est de concevoir et d'évaluer des solutions interactives tirant profit du référent physique pour interagir avec des données numériques situées en se focalisant sur une tâche interactive fondamentale en IHM : la sélection. Dans ce manuscrit nous abordons cette tâche selon une approche fonctionnelle et une approche conceptuelle.Over the past decade, the amount of digital data has been increasing. This data from the Internet of Things or smartphones allows users to understand and analyse their health, lifestyle or energy consumption, and different institutions (cities, campuses, real estate developers) to manage the flow of people, road traffic or energy losses in the buildings they manage. One particular topic that benefits from this is the "smart city". It is therefore essential to make interactive visualisations of this data available in order to generate knowledge and facilitate decision-making. A recent approach proposes to represent these data close to the object that captures or produces them. However, this field is still quite new and there are still many challenges to explore. One of the major challenges identified by Thomas et al. (Thomas et al., 2018) is the development and design of interaction techniques to facilitate the analysis of situated data. The objective of our thesis work is to design and evaluate interactive solutions leveraging the physical referent to interact with situated digital data by focusing on a fundamental interactive task in HCI: selection. In this manuscript we study this task from both a practical and a conceptual approach