Design and evaluation of freehand gesture interaction for light field display

Abstract

The paper reports on a user study of freehand gesture interaction with a prototype of autostereoscopic 3D light field display. The interaction was based on a direct touch selection of simple objects rendered at different positions in space. The main goal of our experiment was to evaluate the overall user experience and perceived cognitive workload of such freehand interaction in 3D environment and compare it to the simplified touch-based interaction in 2D environment. The results of the experiment confirmed the hypothesis that significantly more time is required for the interaction in 3D than the interaction in 2D. Surprisingly, no significant difference was found in the results of the assessment of cognitive workload when comparing 3D and 2D. We believe the interaction scenario proposed and evaluated in this study could represent an efficient and intuitive future interaction technique for the selection and manipulation of content rendered on autostereoscopic 3D displays.