From bowman@cc.gatech.edu Tue May 26 10:52:24 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 KAA07660 for ; Tue, 26 May 1998 10:52:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (qa7Urib7VzvPBY+x6VNxevYCGTrtYCZo@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA13391 for ; Tue, 26 May 1998 10:52:20 -0400 (EDT) Received: from burdell.cc.gatech.edu (root@burdell.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.3.207]) by wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (8.8.8/8.6.12) with ESMTP id HAA20393 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Tue, 26 May 1998 07:52:09 -0700 (PDT) Received: from lennon.cc.gatech.edu (bowman@lennon.cc.gatech.edu [130.207.9.20]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA13341 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Tue, 26 May 1998 10:52:08 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from bowman@localhost) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) id KAA07654 for 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu; Tue, 26 May 1998 10:52:06 -0400 (EDT) From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu (Doug Bowman) Message-Id: <199805261452.KAA07654@lennon.cc.gatech.edu> Subject: UI design in a new medium To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu (3D UI List) Date: Tue, 26 May 1998 10:52:06 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Status: RO Hi everyone, The conversation recently on the list has been great! I've finally got the process of adding a message to the archive down to a science. I had to in order to keep up with the traffic! :) In case you need to look back at previous messages, remember that you can check http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Phd/Doug.Bowman/3dui/ I'd like to respond to a couple of things that have come up in the last few days. First, I was glad to see Matt's excellent summary of the discussion on 'proper' UI design. Whether we're talking about the use of 2D GUI elements or film transition techniques in VEs, we're discussing how much old 'stuff' should be reused in a new medium, and in what way. I agree with Matt's conclusion that we shouldn't reject old solutions just because they're from a different medium, but that we should also not limit ourselves to them. There will always be a cost/benefit tradeoff. Second, Ernst's article regarding the use of 2D interfaces in 3D had some good points. After a (rather lengthy ) message, he concluded that the requirements of most VE interactions are very task-specific, and there will not be one simple solution for all of them. I wholeheartedly agree, and would like to add more to this statement. I think the complexity and domain-specificity of most VE applications make them much more difficult to design interactions for. In my thesis, I'm trying to look at this in a generalized fashion, and consider characteristics of not only the task, but also the user, environment, and system, along with the performance requirements of the application, to determine a good interaction technique. There are many more variables than I can hope to consider in a a few experiments, but I think this framework is a good way to start making the design of interaction techniques for VEs more systematic. Keep up the interesting discussion! Doug -- Doug Bowman, Ph.D. Candidate College of Computing, GVU Center, Georgia Tech Room 388 CRB, (404) 894-5104 bowman@cc.gatech.edu http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/people/Phd/Doug.Bowman/