Designing Mobile MR Workspaces: Effects of Reality Degree and Spatial Configuration During Passenger Productivity in HMDs

Abstract

When anticipating HMDs as the ultimate brought-in device for mobile working, it can be difficult for the passenger to concentrate on productivity tasks within confined and less controllable surroundings. To address the problem, we built three mobile MR workspaces on the Reality Virtuality continuum, which cover three levels of Reality Degree (Mounted Tablet, Augmented Focus Bubble, Virtual Office) and the Spatial Configuration option (NoReposition, Reposition). In a field study, we invited 19 rear-seat passengers to perform a typing task using a physical keyboard and an HMD in comparison to the mounted tablet. The results revealed that their performance regarding text entry rate was impaired in the HMD, while configuring the workspace layout positively influenced their perception of performance. The implemented MR work environment design of Augmented Focus Bubble and Virtual Office induced a higher workload but lowered the passenger's awareness of their real surroundings during the task. Although our participants preferred the tablet-keyboard setup over the HMD usage for mobile typing, they attributed the problems to the heavy weight and low resolution of today’s HMDs and suggested potential advantages of future HMD-based mobile workspaces, such as personalizing their layout or diminishing passenger carsickness. This research can help HMD users to diminish their head motion when switching between the display and keyboard and become less aware of their ever-changing surroundings in AutoWork. It demonstrates a novel use of spatial configurability in MR workspaces and creates opportunities for new mobile working setups. Based on these results, we discussed three main challenges for future mobile MR workspaces: i) When and at which degree of reality should the productivity tools be incorporated inside HMDs to enhance performance? ii) How should MR work environment designs adapt to different types of real surroundings across transportation means? and iii) What is a reasonable upper threshold of physical discomfort across tasks and input techniques? These identified challenges provide concrete starting points for future research and practical developments of mobile MR workspaces.