Towards Applicable 3D User Interfaces for Everyday Working Environments

Desktop environments have proven to be a powerful user interface and are used as the de facto standard human-computer interaction paradigm for over 40 years. However, there is a rising demand on 3D applications dealing with complex datasets, which exceeds the possibilities provided by traditional devices or two-dimensional display.For these domains more immersive and intuitive interfaces are required. But in order to get the users' acceptance, technology-driven solutions that require inconvenient instrumentation, e.g., stereo glasses or tracked gloves, should be avoided. Autostereoscopic display environments equipped with tracking systems enable users to experience 3D virtual environments more natural without annoying devices, for instance via gestures. However, currently these approaches are only applied for specially designed or adapted applications without universal usability.
In this paper we introduce new 3D user interface concepts for such setups where minimal instrumentation of the user is required such that the strategies can be easily integrated in everyday working environments. Therefore, we propose an interaction system and framework which allows to display and interact with both mono- as well as stereoscopic content simultaneously. The challenges for combined mouse-, keyboard- and gesture-based input paradigms in such an environment are pointed out and novel interaction strategies are introduced.

@InProceedings\{SRBH07b,
  author       = "Steinicke, Frank and Ropinski, Timo and Bruder, Gerd and Hinrichs, Klaus H.",
  title        = "Towards Applicable 3D User Interfaces for Everyday Working Environments",
  booktitle    = "Proceedings of the International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (INTERACT)",
  series       = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",
  volume       = "4662",
  pages        = "546--559",
  year         = "2007",
  publisher    = "Springer",
  keywords     = "interscopic",
  url          = "http://basilic.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/Publications/2007/SRBH07b"
}