Comparing a Mouse and a Free Hand Gesture Interaction Technique for 3D Object Manipulation

Abstract

Interacting in 3D has considerable and growing importance today in several areas and most computer systems are equipped with both a mouse or touchscreen and one or more cameras that can be readily used for gesture-based interaction. Literature comparing mouse and free-hand gesture interaction, however, is still somewhat sparse in regards to user satisfaction, learnability and memorability, which can be particularly important attributes for applications in education or entertainment. In this paper, we compare the use of mouse-based interaction with free-hand bimanual gestures to translate, scale and rotate a virtual 3D object. We isolate object manipulation from its selection and focus particularly on those three attributes to test whether the related variables show significant differences when comparing both modalities. To this end, we integrate a gesture recognition system, Microsoft’s Kinect and an educational virtual atlas of anatomy, then design and perform an experiment with 19 volunteers, combining data from self-reported metrics and event logs. Our results show that, in this context, the difference is indeed significant and favors the use of gestures for most experimental tasks and evaluated attributes.