From bowman@cc.gatech.edu Tue Jul 7 17:36:22 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 RAA10044 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:36:21 -0400 (EDT) Received: from wheaten.hitl.washington.edu (nfdgAJcCPpE1gMtp+y/6RZwEQzwoPAOF@[128.95.73.60]) by burdell.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) with ESMTP id RAA13129 for ; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:36:20 -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 OAA30222 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 14:36:01 -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 RAA13087 for <3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu>; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:36:00 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from bowman@localhost) by lennon.cc.gatech.edu (8.8.4/8.6.9) id RAA10028 for 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu; Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:35:58 -0400 (EDT) From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu (Doug Bowman) Message-Id: <199807072135.RAA10028@lennon.cc.gatech.edu> Subject: RE: comparing travel techniques for spatial orientation To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu (3D UI List) Date: Tue, 7 Jul 1998 17:35:57 -0400 (EDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23] Content-Type: text Status: RO > Forwarded from Ken Hinckley: < You may want to look into the "Spatial Updating" psychology literature to get some insights, where subjects have tasks like you're describing that require pointing to a remembered location. I'm not familiar with this literature myself, but I have heard Denny Proffit (from U. Virginia psych department) talk about it some. For example, you mentioned a possible proprioceptive cue from hand pointing. >From what I've heard Denny say, I'd be skeptical that would be particularly helpful, because much of the underlying perception is coded in terms of an egocentric (head-centered) mental representation. So you'd expect the orientation of your head to be important in spatial updating tasks, but not the direction that you're pointing in. Looking into this literature could definitely inform your studies. For example, you'd likely discover the expected precision of pointing to a target in this literature. Good luck! Ken Ken Hinckley Microsoft Research One Microsoft Way Redmond, WA 98052 (425) 703-9065 kenh@microsoft.com -----Original Message----- From: bowman@cc.gatech.edu [mailto:bowman@cc.gatech.edu] Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 1998 12:26 PM To: 3d-ui@hitl.washington.edu Subject: comparing travel techniques for spatial orientation Hi everyone, It's been awfully quiet lately - Jeff P. must be working hard or on vacation... :-) Thought I'd mention what I'm currently working on and solicit some feedback from the group. As you may know, my work is in the area of the design and evaluation of interaction techniques for immersive VEs. Right now I'm in the midst of an experiment comparing the effect of various metaphors for travel on the user's spatial orientation. The basic task is this: the user moves through a virtual corridor in which there are 3 easily recognizable objects. At the end of the corridor, the user is asked to point in the direction of one of these objects to measure his/her spatial orientation. The catch is that the corridor and objects disappear, so the user has to rely on his mental map of the corridor and the objects within it. The main comparison is between various levels of system automation of motion. At one extreme, the user can be in complete control of their motion at all times. For this, I'm using a pointing technique (point in the direction you want to move). At the other extreme, the system can automate all user motion. For this, I just have predefined paths through the corridors. Somewhere in the middle is a technique I call "route planning". Using a 3D map of the corridor, the user marks a path by indicating points using a tracked stylus. When the user gives the "go" command, the system moves the user along that path. With all 3 techniques, the user is allowed to stop at any point by clicking a button. I think there are some interesting tradeoffs here. The pointing technique gives users control, which may give them better information for contructing their mental map (for example, they get a proprioceptive cue for their direction of motion from their hand). They also have to expend conscious effort to traverse the corridor, which may be a good reinforcement for their mental map. On the other hand, the cognitive effort required may displace path/object information in working memory. The fully automated technique has the opposite intuitive value. On the one hand, the user is passive, just "along for the ride", which may cause them to pay less attention to the spatial layout. However, the lack of effort required may allow them to be MORE aware of their surroundings. The route planning technique seems to be a good mixture of the two. The user has to expend cognitive effort to plan the route, but before he actually traverses that route. The planning stage may allow the formation of a good mental map, while the actual movement stage requires little effort besides noting the locations of the objects. I'm also looking at other variables such as whether the user has control over his velocity, whether the user can look at a map of the corridor beforehand (in the first 2 technques), and the complexity of the corridor (all on one horizontal plane or also up and down? only right angles or including non-right angles?). The feedback I'd like is this: what's your intuitive feeling about the 3 techniques I've described with regard to spatial orientation? Will they have any effect, or will the results depend only on users' spatial ability? Will the tradeoffs cancel each other out, or would you expect to see differences between the techniques? I think this is a really interesting question, especially for applications of VEs where spatial orientation is key, such as training for the traversal of terrain/buildings/ships/etc that the user has never been in before. One more question: what would you consider to be a "good" score for the pointing task? 10 degrees off? 30 degrees? 60? Thanks, and I hope this sparks some 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/ -- 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/