This CD-ROM contains the Proceedings of the 2nd ACM Symposium on Spatial User Interaction, SUI 2014, with two keynotes, 18 papers, and 25 posters. Some submissions are accompanied by videos.
One keynote, “The Coming Age of Computer Graphics and the Evolution of Language,” by Ken Perlin (New York University), explores how children born in the near future will experience the co-mingling of reality and computer-generated artifacts, and how this may shape natural language.
The second keynote, “Designing the User in User Interfaces,” by Mark Bolas (University of Southern California), argues that since the blurring of the line between physical and virtual reality eliminates the need for a user “interface,” the task of interaction designers shifts to “designing users.” Unfortunately, there are only very brief abstracts for both keynotes, and it is up to the reader to find further information.
In the first session, “Flat Surfaces in 3D Space,” four papers discuss various aspects of using flat surfaces in 3D environments. One paper, “Ethereal Planes: A Design Framework for 2D Information Spaces in 3D Mixed Reality Environments,” proposes a framework, and then applies it to several examples.
The second session is about “Spatial Gestures,” an area that has found wider application in devices like Microsoft’s Kinect or the Leap Motion controller. Recognizing and interpreting gestures is computationally very challenging; additionally, it may be necessary to distinguish between casual movements and intentional gestures. One paper, “GestureAnalyzer: Visual Analytics for Pattern Analysis of Mid-Air Hand Gestures,” discusses a tool bench for the visual treatment of gestures. It facilitates the mapping of gestures to tasks through a hierarchical clustering engine in combination with a visual definition of gesture features.
Session 3, “Seeing, Walking and Being in Spatial VEs,” explores the effects of fully immersive technology on users, ranging from technical aspects to improve the visual experience over differences in movement (such as walking speed) between the virtual environment and the actual effort by the user, to an experiment where a user was exposed to a virtual environment for 24 hours, albeit in two-hour sessions separated by ten-minute breaks. One of the observations during this self-experiment was a significant increase in simulator sickness, which may not come as a surprise to users of the Oculus Rift (the device used in the experiment). Also of note was that the participant experienced confusion between the virtual environment and the real world.
In the fourth session, “Hybrid Interaction Spaces,” three of the four papers examine the combination of 2D interaction methods (as in touch-based devices) and 3D virtual environments. While much of this work relies on experiments in their early stages, this combination appears to improve user interaction by providing the user with an additional means of orientation, be it as a tangible frame of reference or as a “god-view” of the virtual environment. The last paper in this session, “RUIS - A Toolkit for Developing Virtual Reality Applications with Spatial Interaction,” could offer some help with such experiments. Intended mostly for educational settings, the toolkit intends to simplify the design of and experiments with spatial interaction in virtual environments. It includes 3D user interface building blocks, and supports popular and affordable devices like Microsoft Kinect, Oculus Rift, PlayStation Move, and Razer Hydra.
The last session, “Spatial Pointing and Touching,” focuses on the interaction with virtual objects in 3D environments. In “Void Shadows: Multi-Touch Interaction with Stereoscopic Objects on the Tabletop,” the authors describe experiments with the metaphor of shadows cast by virtual 3D objects onto 2D surfaces such as a tabletop. According to the authors, this technique results in higher precision and faster completion time, compared with in-air techniques.
Among the 25 posters, I was mostly looking for discussions and experiments related to interaction spaces. “Simulator for Developing Gaze Sensitive Environment Using Corneal Reflection-based Remote Gaze Tracker” expands the interaction space for gaze tracking by incorporating eye-tracking devices into a larger 3D space. The authors of “Exploring Tablet Surrounding Interaction Spaces For Medical Imaging” propose to expand the interaction space of tablets by utilizing areas beyond a tablet’s surface in combination with tabletop workspaces. While this sounds intriguing, I found that the short article didn’t contain enough information to understand the design and practical aspects of the proposed system.
Considering the rapid changes in technology, the volume provides an interesting snapshot of the current landscape in spatial user interaction. Several of the regular conference papers were very valuable in offering further details of interesting approaches, or expanding my horizons toward new directions. I wish there were more information on the keynotes and the one-page poster contributions. Nevertheless, I found the time well spent on reading this collection, and can recommend it to anybody interested in spatial user interaction.
