Exploring the Physicality of Widgets for Head-Based Interaction: the Case of Menu in Mixed Reality
In Actes de la 32e conférence francophone sur l'Interaction Humain-Machine (IHM'20.21). pages 11:1-11. 2021.
Charles Bailly, François Leitner, Laurence Nigay
Abstract
Mixed Reality with a Head-Mounted Display (HMD) offers unique perspectives for head-based interaction with virtual content and widgets. Besides virtual widgets, physical objects can be anchors (mixed widgets) or directly materialised widgets (physical widgets). The physicality (virtual-mixed-physical) of widgets defines a new dimension for Mixed Reality (MR) interaction that extends existing taxonomies of widgets in MR. As a first step to explore this new dimension, we focus on a commonly used widget: a menu. We thus evaluate the performance and usability of head pointing to a virtual, a mixed and a physical menu. Results suggest that pointing to a physical menu was on average 2s faster than pointing to a mixed or a virtual menu and preferred by participants. Virtual and mixed menus led to similar performances, but 11 participants over 15 preferred mixed menus over virtual ones. Based on our findings, we provide recommendations (benefits/limitations) for virtual, mixed and physical menus in MR.