Mixed Interaction: Evaluating User Interactions for Object Manipulations in Virtual Space

Abstract

This paper presents an evaluation of a potential new interaction mode in virtual reality (VR) to determine whether it provides any positive impact in terms of how users interact with content. We evaluated the user experiences for 3D object manipulation across three modes of interaction. Interaction using controllers and gestures are used as baselines from which to gauge the potential value of the new mode of interaction, where a single controller and gestures are combined. This paper reports on a user study that captures quantitative and qualitative data related to a variety of object manipulation tasks in a Virtual Environment (VE). We investigated the impact of this new interaction mode with 40 participants across a number of interaction tasks, with the quantitative evaluation indicating that generally, the mixed mode of interaction resulted in task completion times consistently faster than gesture-based interaction and, in some cases, faster than with the use of controllers alone. A qualitative evaluation of the user experience indicated potential application areas for the new mode of interaction.