From jpierce@cs.cmu.edu Fri May 22 10:10:57 1998 Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA19175 for ; Fri, 22 May 1998 10:10:55 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu ([128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA21187 for ; Fri, 22 May 1998 10:10:54 -0400 (EDT) Received: from ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu (UX2.SP.CS.CMU.EDU [128.2.198.102]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with SMTP id HAA17497 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Fri, 22 May 1998 07:10:23 -0700 (PDT) Message-Id: <199805221410.HAA17497@wheaten.hitl.washington.edu> Received: from ASYNC9-CS1.NET.CS.CMU.EDU by ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu id aa14506; 22 May 98 10:10 EDT X-Sender: jpierce@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.0 Date: Fri, 22 May 1998 10:07:46 -0400 To: 3D UI List <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu> From: Jeff Pierce Subject: Re: New topic - adapted 2D interfaces for 3D In-Reply-To: <199805220450.AAA08852@lennon.cc.gatech.edu> References: <199805220224.TAA04911@wheaten.hitl.washington.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Status: RO At 12:50 AM 5/22/98 -0400, Doug Bowman wrote: >I *love* to play with cool new 3D interaction techniques, but I >wish I had a nickel for every time I had to explain them in detail >to a user, and often they still didn't get it. (Of course, someone >will say the techniques I refer to must not have been intuitive >enough) But with some 2D interface elements on a tablet, I just >have to say, "press that button", or "drag that icon". A lot of this is simply because the 2D interaction techniques have become a part of our lexicon. If you had told someone 10 years ago to "drag that icon" you probably would've gotten the same "Huh?" reaction. "Press that button" is something that's in people's lexicon because of their real world activities. I suspect that if we created 3D interaction techniques with instructions like "pull that lever" or "spin that wheel" user's wouldn't have much trouble. I run across the same phenomena Doug has where sometimes just explaining a new 3D interaction technique isn't enough. Two possible reasons for this spring to mind. 1) We're describing something so new to their experience that they can't visualize what we're talking about without seeing the technique used (video) or trying it themselves. Note that this doesn't necessarily imply that the technique isn't "easy to use". Most people would agree that the WIM is fairly easy to use once you understand it, but I've gotten a number of blank stares if I try to just explain it with words. 2) If you try to explain a new technique to someone who's already perceptually immersed in a virtual world, they might simply not have enough brain power left to process what you're explaining. Case in point: one of the worlds created for Randy's Building Virtual Worlds course was a Spiderman world. Users wear modified pinch gloves: pinch your thumb and forefinger together and you can cling to and climb walls. Touch your middle and ring fingers to your palm and you sling a web and get pulled to whatever it hit. Fairly simple to explain. Users pick it up fairly fast if you explain / demonstrate before they put the HMD on. If you explain it _after_ they're already wearing the HMD almost no one gets it. You essentially have to grab their hand and manipulate their fingers to get them to understand. >The question I would ask would be, "Why use a fully 3D technique >if you don't have to?" People aren't used to manipulating more >than about 2 degrees of freedom at once. You can constrain your >3D interaction, but how is that different from 2D? There are plenty >of mundane tasks that will have to be done in a complex VE application >which don't require 3D and which would probably suffer from a 3D >implementation. I think voice input will probably solve a lot of >these issues, but others will require 2D interfaces that are well- >integrated with the 3D VE. Oh, I have no complaints about 2D interfaces that are "well-integrated with the 3D VE". My complaint is with 2D interfaces that are slapped in because the designer fell back on them. Like push buttons that float in midair (point at the button to push it), or (shudder) text boxes where the user has to point at letters one after another. >P.S. Everyone congratulate Matt on receiving his Ph.D. diploma >at U.Va. over last weekend... Congratulations, Matt. Does Court Square have any Xingu left? Jeff