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Context-driven interaction in immersive virtual environments

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Abstract

There are many interaction tasks a user may wish to accomplish in an immersive virtual environment. A careful examination of these tasks reveals that they are often performed under different contexts. For each task and context, specialized interaction techniques can be developed. We present the context-driven interaction model: a design pattern that represents contextual information as a first-class, quantifiable component within a user interface and supports the development of context-sensitive applications by decoupling context recognition, context representation, and interaction technique development. As a primary contribution, this model provides an enumeration of important representations of contextual information gathered from across the literature and describes how these representations can effect the selection of an appropriate interaction technique. We also identify how several popular 3D interaction techniques adhere to this design pattern and describe how the pattern itself can lead to a more focused development of effective interfaces. We have constructed a formalized programming toolkit and runtime system that serves as a reference implementation of the context-driven model and a discussion is provided explaining how the toolkit can be used to implement a collection of representative 3D interaction interfaces.

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Notes

  1. The SVE toolkit is freely available for academic use at http://give.ramapo.edu/lab.html.

  2. The true value of the LOC is always available to the developer. The low, normal, and high ranges are defined simply for convenience and as a guideline.

  3. The user could also explicitly indicate their workspace—perhaps by entering coordinates into the application.

  4. We do not claim that our model replaces the thorough usability analysis involved in CRM development—it only aids in their implementation.

  5. Switching viewpoint control techniques certainly has the possibility of disorienting the user, and thus this is a prime example of a situation where explicit confirmation might be used so the user is not “surprised” by the change.

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  1. Ramapo College of New Jersey, Mahwah, NJ, USA

    Scott Frees

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  1. Scott Frees
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Frees, S. Context-driven interaction in immersive virtual environments. Virtual Reality 14, 277–290 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-010-0178-2

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