Focus-based design of mixed reality systems

Abstract

Currently very few techniques are available to support the design of Augmented and Mixed Reality (MR) systems. Task elicitation is more complex for MR systems than for traditional information systems. Having multiple sources of information and two worlds of interaction (real and virtual) involves making choices about what to attend to and when. Interaction based on traditional input and output devices is not effective in a mixed scenario. It distracts the user from the task at hand and may create a severe cognitive seam. Understanding, formalizing and modeling such aspects can help designers to assess interaction at all the stages of development. We are interested in focused applications that require the user's hand free for real world tasks and to understand how the user's task focus drives designing MR systems. The contribution of this paper is twofold: it first illustrates the specific requirements posed by such systems and then it shows through a study case that there is currently no complete support to model these aspects among the tools commonly employed for task modeling.

Evaluating Display Modalities Using a Mixed Reality Game

“…As wrist-worn displays and HMDs also help to accomplish similar tasks, we investigate which display modality works best when users need to split their attention. Trevisan et al showed that when real and virtual worlds interact, designers must focus a user's attention on one or the other [46], pointing out that the ability to focus is affected by UI design. We investigate intentional splitting of attention as a part of gameplay, making decisions about where to focus a game mechanic.…”

Improving the Ergonomic Quality of Ar-Based E-Learning Systems: A Task-Based Design Approach

“…As pointed out by Trevisan et al (2004) it is more difficult to model tasks in the context of two worlds of interaction (real and virtual) and multiple sources of information. They suggested an integration of several notations in order to express the specific task characteristics in AR.…”