Prior research has developed a number of manipulation techniques that can achieve precise object placement in virtual reality, but studies of these techniques typically use simple objects. We conducted a study comparing two existing techniques, (AMP-IT and WISDOM), during alignment of objects with complex geometry to evaluate the potential influence of geometric complexity on performance, usability, workload and preference. Our findings indicate that participants had faster completion times and higher trial completion rates with AMP-IT on high-precision alignment tasks, contrary to earlier findings that used simple objects. Yet WISDOM is still preferred and considered more usable, despite increased workload and poorer performance, exposing participants' willingness to trade objective performance for comfort during use.

Collaborative virtual environments allow workers to contribute to team projects across space and time. While much research has closely examined the problem of working in different spaces at the same time, few have investigated the best practices for collaborating in those spaces at different times aside from textual and auditory annotations. We designed a system that allows experts to record a tour inside a virtual inspection space, preserving knowledge and providing later observers with insights through a 3D playback of the expert’s inspection. We also created several interactions to ensure that observers are tracking the tour and remaining engaged. We conducted a user study to evaluate the influence of these interactions on an observing user’s information recall and user experience. Findings indicate that independent viewpoint control during a tour enhances the user experience compared to fully passive playback and that additional interactivity can improve auditory and spatial recall of key information conveyed during the tour.

Locating small features in a large, dense object in virtual reality (VR) poses a significant interaction challenge. While existing multiscale techniques support transitions between various levels of scale, they are not focused on handling dense, homogeneous objects with hidden features. We propose a novel approach that applies the concept of progressive refinement to VR navigation, enabling focused inspections. We conducted a user study where we varied two independent variables in our design, navigation style (STRUCTURED vs. UNSTRUCTURED) and display mode (SELECTION vs. EVERYTHING), to better understand their effects on efficiency and awareness during multiscale navigation. Our results showed that unstructured navigation can be faster than structured and that displaying only the selection can be faster than displaying the entire object. However, using an everything display mode can support better location awareness and object understanding.

Virtual environments (VEs) empower geographically distributed teams to collaborate on a shared project regardless of time. Existing research has separately investigated collaborations within these VEs at the same time (i.e., synchronous) or different times (i.e., asynchronous). In this work, we highlight the often-overlooked concept of bichronous collaboration and define it as the seamless integration of archived information during a real-time collaborative session. We revisit the time-space matrix of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and reclassify the time dimension as a continuum. We describe a system that empowers collaboration across the temporal states of the time continuum within a VE during remote work. We conducted a user study using the system to discover how the bichronous temporal state impacts the user experience during a collaborative inspection. Findings indicate that the bichronous temporal state is beneficial to collaborative activities for information processing, but has drawbacks such as changed interaction and positioning behaviors in the VE.

Although access to sufficient screen space is crucial to knowledge work, workers often find themselves with limited access to display infrastructure in remote or public settings. While virtual displays can be used to extend the available screen space through extended reality (XR) head-worn displays (HWD), we must better understand the implications of working with them in public settings from both users' and bystanders' viewpoints. To this end, we conducted two user studies. We first explored the usage of a hybrid AR display across real-world settings and tasks. We focused on how users take advantage of virtual displays and what social and environmental factors impact their usage of the system. A second study investigated the differences between working with a laptop, an AR system, or a VR system in public. We focused on a single location and participants performed a predefined task to enable direct comparisons between the conditions while also gathering data from bystanders. The combined results suggest a positive acceptance of XR technology in public settings and show that virtual displays can be used to accompany existing devices. We highlighted some environmental and social factors. We saw that previous XR experience and personality can influence how people perceive the use of XR in public. In addition, we confirmed that using XR in public still makes users stand out and that bystanders are curious about the devices, yet have no clear understanding of how they can be used.

Precise 3D manipulation in virtual reality (VR) is essential for effectively aligning virtual objects. However, state-of-the-art VR manipulation techniques have limitations when high levels of precision are required, including the unnaturalness caused by scaled rotations and the increase in time due to degree-of-freedom (DoF) separation in complex tasks. We designed two novel techniques to address these issues: AMP-IT, which offers direct manipulation with an adaptive scaled mapping for implicit DoF separation, and WISDOM, which offers a combination of Simple Virtual Hand and scaled indirect manipulation with explicit DoF separation. We compared these two techniques against baseline and state-of-the-art manipulation techniques in a controlled experiment. Results indicate that WISDOM and AMP-IT have significant advantages over best-practice techniques regarding task performance, usability, and user preference.

Collaborative virtual environments afford new capabilities in telepresence applications, allowing participants to co-inhabit an environment to interact while being embodied via avatars. However, shared content within these environments often takes away the attention of collaborators from observing the non-verbal cues conveyed by their peers, resulting in less effective communication. Exaggerated gestures, abstract visuals, as well as a combination of the two, have the potential to improve the effectiveness of communication within these environments in comparison to familiar, natural non-verbal visualizations. We designed and conducted a user study where we evaluated the impact of these different non-verbal visualizations on users' identification time, understanding, and perception. We found that exaggerated gestures generally perform better than non-exaggerated gestures, abstract visuals are an effective means to convey intentional reactions, and the combination of gestures with abstract visuals provides some benefits compared to their standalone counterparts.

For touch typists, using a physical keyboard ensures optimal text entry task performance in immersive virtual environments. However, successful typing depends on the user’s ability to accurately position their hands on the keyboard after performing other, non-keyboard tasks. Finding the correct hand position depends on sensory feedback, including visual information. We designed and conducted a user study where we investigated the impact of visual representations of the keyboard and users’ hands on the time required to place hands on the homing bars of a keyboard after performing other tasks. We found that this keyboard homing time decreased as the fidelity of visual representations of the keyboard and hands increased, with a video pass-through condition providing the best performance. We discuss additional impacts of visual representations of a user’s hands and the keyboard on typing performance and user experience in virtual reality.