VirtualDesk: A Comfortable and Efficient Immersive Information Visualization Approach

Abstract

3D representations are potentially useful under many circumstances, but suffer from long known perception and interaction challenges. Current immersive technologies, which combine stereoscopic displays and natural interaction, are being progressively seen as an opportunity to tackle this issue, but new guidelines and studies are still needed, especially regarding information visualization. Many proposed approaches are impractical for actual usage, resulting in user discomfort or requiring too much time or space. In this work, we implement and evaluate an alternative data exploration metaphor where the user remains seated and viewpoint change is only realisable through physical movements. All manipulation is done directly by natural mid-air gestures, with the data being rendered at arm's reach. The virtual reproduction of the analyst's desk aims to increase immersion and enable tangible interaction with controls and two dimensional associated information. A comparative user study was carried out against a desktop-based equivalent, exploring a set of 9 perception and interaction tasks based on previous literature and a multidimensional projection use case. We demonstrate that our prototype setup, named VirtualDesk, presents excellent results regarding user comfort and immersion, and performs equally or better in all analytical tasks, while adding minimal or no time overhead and amplifying user subjective perceptions of efficiency and engagement. Results are also contrasted to a previous experiment employing artificial flying navigation, with significant observed improvements.