Definition of Tactile Interactions for a Multi-Criteria Selection in a Virtual World

Abstract

Abstract-Tablets, smartphones are becoming increasingly common and interfaces are predominantly tactile and often multi-touch. More and more schools are testing them with their pupils in the hope of bringing pedagogic benefits. With this new type of devices, new interactions become possible. A lot of studies have been done on the manipulation of 3D objects with 2D input devices but we are just at the beginning of studies that made a link between needs of pedagogy and possibilities of these new types of interactions. FINGERS© is an application for learning spatial geometry. It's written for pupils from 9 to 12 years old. Interactions have been designed with teachers. Some interactions are specifics for 3D geometry (3 DOF translations, rotations, nets, combinations of cubes, etc) and someone are general like designation or multi-selection. A lot of grammars of gesture propose a set of interactions to select an object or a group of objects. Multi-taps or lasso around an area are commonly adopted interactions. Performing geometry exercises needs imaging another interactions. For example how selecting all Cubes, how selecting all green objects. The real question is how introduce a parameter in selection. After presenting the limits of current solutions, this communication presents the solutions developed in FINGERS©. We explain how they allow a "parameterized" selection.

Children Perception of 3D Usual Shapes in Virtual Environments

“…That may signify that they do not grasp 3D in virtual space and they were not able to reconstruct mentally the third dimension. This result seems to be consistent with Vivian et al (2014) who consider that the ability of third-dimension mental reconstruction from dynamic information can be problematic for some learners. However, verbatims of children during experiment invite to stay cautious with this interpretation of this type of choice.…”

“…In spite of the proximity between virtual representation and the real 3D world, the succession of plane information during movement of the virtual 3D shapes must be stocked in visual working memory and used to reconstruct the third dimension (Vivian et al, 2014). We must retain all information presented during the dynamic presentation of the object to construct a mental image of the shape that take into account retained information.…”