Future offices are likely reshaped by Augmented Reality (AR) extending the display space while maintaining awareness of surroundings, and thus promise to support collaborative tasks such as brainstorming or sensemaking. However, it is unclear how physical surroundings and co-located collaboration influence the spatial organization of virtual content for sensemaking. Therefore, we conducted a study (N=28) to investigate the effect of office environments and work styles during a document classification task using AR with regard to content placement, layout strategies, and sensemaking workflows. Results show that participants require furniture, especially tables and whiteboards, to assist sensemaking and collaboration regardless of room settings, while generous free spaces (e.g., walls) are likely used when available. Moreover, collaborating participants tend to use furniture despite personal layout preferences. We identified different placement and layout strategies, as well as the transitions in-between. Finally, we propose design implications for future immersive sensemaking applications and beyond.

Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to revolutionize our workspaces, since it considerably extends the limits of current displays while keeping users aware of their collaborators and surroundings. Collective activities like brainstorming and sensemaking often use space for arranging documents and information and thus will likely benefit from AR-enhanced offices. Until now, there has been very little research on how the physical surroundings might affect virtual content placement for collaborative sensemaking. We therefore conducted an initial study with eight participants in which we compared two different room settings for collaborative image categorization regarding content placement, spatiality, and layout. We found that participants tend to utilize the room’s vertical surfaces as well as the room’s furniture, particularly through edges and gaps, for placement and organization. We also identified three different spatial layout patterns (panoramic-strip, semi-cylindrical layout, furniture-based distribution) and observed the usage of temporary storage spaces specifically for collaboration.

In this paper, we present MIRIA, a Mixed Reality Interaction Analysis toolkit designed to support the in-situ visual analysis of user interaction in mixed reality and multi-display environments. So far, there are few options to effectively explore and analyze interaction patterns in such novel computing systems. With MIRIA, we address this gap by supporting the analysis of user movement, spatial interaction, and event data by multiple, co-located users directly in the original environment. Based on our own experiences and an analysis of the typical data, tasks, and visualizations used in existing approaches, we identify requirements for our system. We report on the design and prototypical implementation of MIRIA, which is informed by these requirements and offers various visualizations such as 3D movement trajectories, position heatmaps, and scatterplots. To demonstrate the value of MIRIA for real-world analysis tasks, we conducted expert feedback sessions using several use cases with authentic study data.

Group awareness is a prominent challenge in the field of co-located collaboration in Multi-display Environments (MDE), where several personal and shared devices are operated simultaneously by multiple users. With a focus on Collaborative Information Seeking (CIS) and particularly different levels of information sharing, our overall goal is to investigate aspects that influence this group awareness as well as the general group performance in such MDE. In this work, we present the conceptual foundation and approach of a research tool, called CoFind. Developed as a lightweight web browser plugin, which connects collaborators by sharing information resources, it provides comprehensive data and activity logging in the context of user studies and their evaluation. Based on an initial lab experiment, we also present first insights on the feasibility of our approach and the utility of our developed tool, allowing to plan and carry out further user studies in this challenging research field.

Zusammenfassung: Der Videocampus Sachsen ist ein Verbundvorhaben von acht sächsischen Hochschulen. Ziel ist der Aufbau eines gemeinsamen Videoportals, das sachsenweit und in allen Bereichen der Hochschulen (Lehre, Forschung, Öffentlichkeitsarbeit) Einsatz finden soll. Neben technischer Innovation stehen u.a. rechtliche Unbedenklichkeit, Referentialität und nationale/internationale Sichtbarkeit im Vordergrund. Gefördert durch das Sächsische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kunst wird von 09/2015 bis 12/2016 hierzu eine Machbarkeitsstudie angefertigt. Bestandteile sind neben einer umfassenden Bedarfserhebung ein Systemleistungsvergleich, eine Wirtschaftlichkeitsuntersuchung und eine Potentialanalyse. In Form eines Posters wird die Machbarkeitsuntersuchung inklusive erster Ergebnisse vorgestellt. Ziel ist es, mit den Tagungsteilnehmerinnen und -teilnehmern bzgl. der Zukunftsträchtigkeit videobasierter Inhalte ins Gespräch zu kommen, bspw. innovative Methoden, Geschäftsmodelle oder spezielle Aspekte wie Barrierefreiheit oder Internationalisierung.

Research on interactive wall displays has thus far focused mostly on professional use. However, as large displays with support for touch and other input modalities become more common, it becomes reasonable to assume use in more casual settings as well. We present Miners, one of the first collaborative games for a touch-sensitive display wall, and investigate multimodal, multi-user interaction in this context. In this fast-paced game, four players cooperate to rescue workers trapped in an underground cave, with each player being able to influence the game world in a different way. In an exploratory study using Miners, we found that players enjoyed the game and showed very high engagement. On the other hand, awareness suffered: Players often missed events in other areas. In addition, we found limited awareness of other players' actions and social cues. We report on these results in detail and discuss implications for touch-based wall interaction in general as well as in other application contexts.

In this paper we present the approach of interaction scaling. It assists users during their current tasks by adjusting interactivity depending on the user's distance to large high-resolution displays. The mapping method of interaction scaling combines the calculation of a distance-adjusted mapping factor with a manual/automatic change of precision levels. In our user study we evaluated how different accuracies, user preferences and physical navigation affect the user performance of distance-aware manipulation techniques. We used symmetric/asymmetric bimanual manipulation techniques that were evaluated with interaction scaling and a direct mapping approach. Further, we differentiated between coarse-grained and fine-grained accuracy of manipulation tasks. The study identified that interaction scaling improves user performance for very precise manipulation tasks. The participants were able to manipulate objects more accurately with asymmetric technique than with symmetric technique. Most participants preferred a manual switching; however, the tasks could be solved equally well with automatic switching by half of them.

Das Ziel der Arbeit ist die Entwicklung von Methoden, die den Nutzer bei seiner Tatigkeit in grosen hochauflosenden Displayumgebungen unterstutzen, indem die Visualisierung und die Interaktivitat an den aktuellen Betrachtungsabstand angepasst werden. Das vorgestellte Interaction Scaling (IS) verwendet die physische Navigation fur die Anpassung, indem die Berechnung eines distanzabhangigen Mappings mit automatischem/manuellem Wechsel der Prazisionsstufen kombiniert wird. In Studien wird aufgezeigt, dass IS fur 2D Manipulation die Nutzerperformanz verbessert, wenn die benotigte Prazision steigt.

In this work, we introduce our interaction concept for efficient control of cyber-physical systems CPS. The proposed concept addresses the challenges of the increased amount of smart/electronic devices along with increasingly complex user interfaces. With a dual reality approach, the user is able to perform the same action in the physical world as well in the virtual world by synchronizing both. We solve thereby the most important compelling issue of ease of use, flexibility, and bridging the gap between both worlds. Our approach is substantiated by two test scenarios by means of a characteristically CPS setting.

Understanding information and gaining insights about information usually means interacting with the displayed information. Utilizing the new capabilities of smart meeting rooms, visual outputs of different information representation applications are presented according to the user's needs. In this paper we present smart interaction management. This interaction approach enables the users to interact with all displayed views, utilizing the novel capabilities of these environments while still being able to interact with applications in a conventional manner using local devices. We further show two use cases demonstrating typical applications of our approach in such multi-display environments: (1) to modify the arrangement and layout of views and (2) to interact with the displayed information within a view.

Large high-resolution displays allow users to perceive the global context of information from a distance and to explore detailed information at close-up range. This enables the user to interact with displayed content at various distances. In this paper we introduce bimanual interaction techniques that enable users to manipulate virtual content with the suitable accuracy. The separated-cursors technique differentiates between the manipulation tasks while the connected-cursors technique allows performing the manipulation tasks simultaneously. We consider three relative mapping methods which map the physical hand motion to relative virtual object motion depending on the user–display distance (interaction scaling). Mapping is based on a continuous distance-related mapping factor or predefined mapping factors. We evaluated the separated-cursors technique with and without interaction scaling. The explorative study indicates that a distance-related continuous mapping factor performs better than predefined mapping factors. Furthermore, the participants often needed fewer object selections to sort objects with interaction scaling.

Large high-resolution displays are potentially useful to pre-sent complex data at a higher level of detail embedded in the context of surrounding information. This requires an appropriate visualization and also suitable interaction techniques. In this paper, we describe an approach to visualize a graph hierarchy on a large high-resolution display and to interact with the visualization by physical navigation. The visualization is based on a node-link diagram with dynamically computed labels. We utilize head tracking to allow users to explore the graph hierarchy at different levels of abstraction. Detailed information is displayed when the user is closer to the display and aggregate views of higher levels of abstraction are obtained by stepping back. The head tracking information is also utilized for steering the dynamic labeling depending on the user’s position and orientation.

We present a novel tele-presence approach that extends the window metaphor by combining large high-resolution LCD walls with multi-camera 3D video. We propose to integrate an array of cameras into the bezels of the wall to support flexible camera placement for optimized video acquisition. The users's 3D video representation combined with the high-resolution LCD wall provides local and remote users with a shared virtual space in an extended life-size window metaphor. We discuss important system design aspects such as camera placement strategies, resolution, field of view, and dynamic camera selection for different 3D video reconstruction approaches, such as stereo and visual hulls. Finally, we describe our current prototype system based on the design guidelines described in this paper.

We describe the implementation of a playful multi-user virtual riding lesson for beginners. Our work focused on the integration of a wooden horse, equipped with real snaffle and saddle, which is used as input interface to navigate in a 3D environment. With the help of the wooden horse, the user is able to interact with a virtual 3D horse via reins and legs, similar to a real riding scenario.

In this paper we discuss the effect of two different wind output devices and compare head mounted wind with stationary wind, i.e., wind output of fix mounted fans on a rack. By means of a simple interactive 3D application we evaluated the subjects' feeling of presence in a pre-test using a standard presence questionnaire. The preliminary results showed that wind output increases presence and indicated a tendency towards stationary wind output. This pilot study delivered us some initial guidance for future in-depth evaluation of wind output.

This paper describes a pragmatic approach for the design of hybrid user interfaces based on a number of extensions of an existing 3D authoring system. We present the design and realization of a visual framework dedicated to the prototyping of hybrid user interfaces. The rapid development environment was applied in a teaching context during lectures on advanced user interface design. The results showed that our framework provides a suitable tool to quickly design and test hybrid user interfaces.

With 3D information space we denote a three-dimensional visualization that contains 2D visualizations and puts them in a semantic context. In this paper, we show how Mixed Reality (MR) can be exploited as a technology in order to realize better interaction in a 3D information space and, as a result, to develop new interactive visualization techniques. Here, the real space is used as a metaphor for interacting with the 3D information space. In this context, we present MR based interaction techniques for basic operations like locate, slice, manipulate, freeze and compare. In addition, we examine the hardware set-up that serves as a framework for user interaction and present a novel systems approach how to technically implement the MR based visualization system. Our evaluation shows advantages of our interaction techniques like the direct experience of distances in 3D information space, the usage of a real frame of reference for virtual visualizations, or the intuitive specification of positions and orientations.