I am happy to say that I am on two papers accepted at the International Symposium of Mixed and Augmented Reality 2022 (ISMAR), both on offshoots of my immersive space to think (IST) project.
Desk Portal
The first paper accepted was an evaluation study on the desk portal concept I designed for users switching between 3D interactions and typing interactions frequently. This study was performed by my colleague Alexander Giovannelli. The paper can be accessed here, and the paper abstract follows:
For touch typists, using a physical keyboard ensures optimal text entry task performance in immersive virtual environments. However, successful typing depends on the user’s ability to accurately position their hands on the keyboard after performing other, non-keyboard tasks. Finding the correct hand position depends on sensory feedback, including visual information. We designed and conducted a user study where we investigated the impact of visual representations of the keyboard and users’ hands on the time required to place hands on the homing bars of a keyboard after performing other tasks. We found that this keyboard homing time decreased as the fidelity of visual representations of the keyboard and hands increased, with a video pass-through condition providing the best performance. We discuss additional impacts of visual representations of a user’s hands and the keyboard on typing performance and user experience in virtual reality.
Semi-Automated Clustering
The second paper accepted at ISMAR is a part of the semantic interaction techniques designed to assist analysts using IST. This study was run by my colleague Ibrahim Tahmid. We designed, implemented, and evaluated three methods of visually clustering documents in 3D immersive space. A preprint of our paper can be accessed here, and the abstract follows:
Immersive spaces have great potential to support analysts in complex sensemaking tasks, but the use of only manual interactions for organizing data elements can become tedious. We analyzed the user interactions to support cluster formation in an immersive sensemaking system, and we designed a semi-automated cluster creation technique that determines the user’s intent to create a cluster based on object proximity. We present the results of a user study comparing this proximity-based technique with a manual clustering technique and a baseline immersive workspace with no explicit clustering support. We found that semi-automated clustering was faster and preferred, while manual clustering gave greater control to users. These results provide support for the approach of adding intelligent semantic interactions to aid the users of immersive analytics systems.
See you there
I plan on attending ISMAR 2022 in person this year in Singapore, and I hope to make contacts and connections with professionals in industry positions!