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Embodied Navigation in Immersive Abstract Data Visualization: Is Overview+Detail or Zooming Better for 3D Scatterplots?

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data has no natural scale and so interactive data visualizations must provide techniques to allow the user to choose their viewpoint and scale. Such techniques are well established in desktop visualization tools. The two most common techniques are zoom+pan and overview+detail. However, how best to enable the analyst to navigate and view abstract data at different levels of scale in immersive environments has not previously been studied. We report the findings of the first systematic study of immersive navigation techniques for 3D scatterplots. We tested four conditions that represent our best attempt to adapt standard 2D navigation techniques to data visualization in an immersive environment while still providing standard immersive navigation techniques through physical movement and teleportation. We compared room-sized visualization versus a zooming interface, each with and without an overview. We find significant differences in participants' response times and accuracy for a number of standard visual analysis tasks. Both zoom and overview provide benefits over standard locomotion support alone (i.e., physical movement and pointer teleportation). However, which variation is superior, depends on the task. We obtain a more nuanced understanding of the results by analyzing them in terms of a time-cost model for the different components of navigation: way-finding, travel, number of travel steps, and context switching.
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Embodied Navigation in Immersive Abstract Data Visualization:
Is Overview+Detail or Zooming Better for 3D Scatterplots?
Yalong Yang, Maxime Cordeil, Johanna Beyer, Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott and Hanspeter Pfister
Fig. 1. Conditions tested in our user study: a) Room-sized interface (or
Rm
). b) Room-sized interface with an overview (or
RmO
). c)
Zooming interface (or Zm): users zoom in and out with a “pinch” gesture. d) Zooming interface with an overview (or ZmO).
Abstract
— Abstract data has no natural scale and so interactive data visualizations must provide techniques to allow the user to choose
their viewpoint and scale. Such techniques are well established in desktop visualization tools. The two most common techniques are
zoom+pan and overview+detail. However, how best to enable the analyst to navigate and view abstract data at different levels of scale
in immersive environments has not previously been studied. We report the findings of the first systematic study of immersive navigation
techniques for 3D scatterplots. We tested four conditions that represent our best attempt to adapt standard 2D navigation techniques
to data visualization in an immersive environment while still providing standard immersive navigation techniques through physical
movement and teleportation. We compared room-sized visualization versus a zooming interface, each with and without an overview.
We find significant differences in participants’ response times and accuracy for a number of standard visual analysis tasks. Both zoom
and overview provide benefits over standard locomotion support alone (i.e., physical movement and pointer teleportation). However,
which variation is superior, depends on the task. We obtain a more nuanced understanding of the results by analyzing them in terms of
a time-cost model for the different components of navigation: way-finding, travel, number of travel steps, and context switching.
Index Terms—Immersive Analytics, Information Visualization, Virtual Reality, Navigation, Overview+Detail, Zooming, Scatterplot
1 INTRODUCTION
Abstract data has no natural scale. That is, data that is not based in a
physical reference space can be freely re-scaled and viewed from any
angle that best supports the analysis task. However, this freedom also
represents a challenge to the design of interactive navigation methods:
how do we allow people to move freely through an abstract information
space without confusing them? Designers of desktop visualization
tools have grappled with this problem for decades and have evolved
sophisticated techniques for navigation. For example, it is common in
data visualizations, such as scatterplots, time-series, and so on, to allow
users to zoom in, making a specific region larger to access more detail.
They can then pan around at the new zoom level or zoom out again
to reorient themselves in the full dataset. Another common approach
is to provide a minimap window to provide an overview of the whole
dataset at all times. As discussed in Section 2.1, these methods are well
studied and widely accepted in desktop data visualization.
Recent developments in technology has seen renewed interest in us-
ing immersive environments for data visualization, but this requires us
to reconsider and possibly adapt navigation methods that have become
Yalong Yang, Johanna Beyer and Hanspeter Pfister are with the School of
Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
USA. E-mail: {yalongyang, jbeyer, pfister}@g.harvard.edu
Maxime Cordeil, Tim Dwyer and Kim Marriott are with the Department of
Human-Centred Computing, Faculty of Information Technology, Monash
University, Melbourne, Australia. E-mail: {max.cordeil, tim.dwyer,
kim.marriott}@monash.edu
Manuscript received xx xxx. 201x; accepted xx xxx. 201x. Date of Publication
xx xxx. 201x; date of current version xx xxx. 201x. For information on
obtaining reprints of this article, please send e-mail to: reprints@ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier: xx.xxxx/TVCG.201x.xxxxxxx
standard on the desktop. As virtual and augmented reality headsets
continue to improve — e.g., in resolution, field-of-view, tracking sta-
bility, and interaction capabilities — they present a viable alternative
to traditional screens for the purposes of data visualization. A recent
study has found a clear benefit to an immersive display of 3D clustered
point clouds over more traditional 2D displays [32]. However, in that
study the only way for participants to change their point of view was
through physical movement. There are questions about how one might
navigate in situations where the participant cannot move around (e.g.,
they are seated), or where the ideal zoom-level for close inspection of
the data is too large to fit in the physically navigable space.
In Virtual Reality (VR) gaming “teleporting” is a standard way to
navigate a space that is too large to fully explore through one-to-one
scale physical movement. The equivalent of the desktop minimap
overview+detail in VR is World In Miniature (WIM) navigation. Zoom-
ing is also possible in immersive environments through a latched gesture
to scale the information space around the user. However, the effec-
tiveness of such immersive navigation techniques for point cloud data
visualization applications in VR has not previously been tested. The in-
herent differences between such abstract data visualizations and typical
VR worlds, namely, the freedom to move between different scales and
viewpoints, makes it unclear whether standard VR navigation methods
are sufficient to support analysis tasks.
Our overarching research question, therefore, is:
how can we best
enable the analyst to navigate and view abstract data at different
levels of scale in immersive environments?
To address this question
we first thoroughly review standard data visualization navigation tech-
niques from desktop environments and the initial work that has begun
to provide navigable data spaces in immersive environments (Sec. 2).
We find that existing literature in immersive data visualization has not
fully explored how to adapt navigation techniques for data visualiza-
tion from the desktop and/or to adapt VR navigation techniques to the
arXiv:2008.09941v1 [cs.HC] 23 Aug 2020
application of data visualization. Therefore, in Section 3, we look at
the space of possible ways in which users can navigate immersive data
visualizations and from this, in Sec. 4.1, we choose and study four basic
navigation possibilities: room-sized data at fixed-scale with physical
navigation versus a smaller data display with zooming (dynamic scale),
each with and without an overview WIM display.
Specifically, we compare zooming to overview+detail. We are par-
ticularly interested in how to ensure that navigation remains embodied
through physical movements and gestures that are as natural as possi-
ble [22]. The contributions of this paper are:
1.
The first systematic exploration of overview and detail interaction
paradigms in immersive scatterplot visualization, Sec. 3.
2.
A study comparing four navigation conditions (as above), Sec. 4
and Sec. 5. This finds that: Participants significantly preferred
either zoom or overview over standard locomotion support alone.
Adding an overview also improved accuracy in some tasks. Room-
sized egocentric views were generally faster in our study.
3.
A more nuanced interpretation of our study results using a navi-
gation time-cost model, Sec. 6.
4. Recommendations for use of zoom and overview in combination
with physical navigation for immersive data visualization, Sec. 7.
2 RE LATE D WORK
2.1 Navigation in 2D Visualizations
A foundation of visual data exploration is the Shneiderman Informa-
tion Seeking Mantra of “Overview first, filtering and details on de-
mand” [60]. Several paradigms have emerged to support navigation
following this mantra, such as overview+detail, focus+context [41] and
zooming [17]. Many 2D visualization techniques provide such interac-
tions, such as Google Map (zooming), PowerPoint (overview+detail),
and fish-eye views (focus+context). In an extensive literature review,
Cockburn et al. [19] conclude that each technique has issues — zoom-
ing impacts memory [20]; focus+context distorts the information space;
and overview + detail views also make it difficult for users to relate
information between the overview and the detailed view [9,29].
Navigation has also been studied on mobile displays. Burigat et
al. [14] found that interactive overviews were particularly advantageous
on small-screen mobile devices for map navigation tasks [14,15]. How-
ever, in the context of information visualization, adding an overview
to a zoomable scatterplot on a PDA was found to be ineffective and
detrimental compared to a zoomable user interface only [16].
With screens and projectors becoming cheaper, larger and easier
to tile, researchers have explored the benefits of large display sizes
for navigating visualizations. Ball and North [4] studied the effect of
display size on 2D navigation of abstract data spaces and found that
larger displays and physical navigation outperformed smaller displays.
They also found that virtual navigation (i.e., pan and zoom) was more
frustrating than physically navigating a large tiled-display. Ball and
North [5] also investigated the reason for improved performance of
information space navigation on large displays and found that physical
movements were the main factor, compared to field of view. An-
other study by Ronne and Hornbaek [55] investigated focus+context,
overview+detail and zooming on varying display sizes. They found that
small size display was least efficient, but found no differences between
medium and large screens and that overview+detail performed the best.
In our study, we investigate the use of overview+detail and contin-
uous zoom, as they are most suited to our tasks. We do not consider
focus+context as it is not well suited to our tasks (i.e., counting points
and evaluating distances between pairs of points), and spatial distortion
would introduce misinterpretation of distances.
2.2 Navigation in VR Environments
Research in 3D User Interfaces (3DUI) and Virtual Reality has explored
different ways for users to navigate 3D immersive scenes. Laviola et
al. [37, Ch. 8] provide a taxonomy of these techniques. They describe
four navigation metaphors — walking, steering, selection-based travel
and manipulation based travel.
Walking in VR can be either real walking (i.e., the user walks with
a VR headset in the real world) or an assisted form of walking (e.g.,
using a treadmill [26] or more dedicated devices to emulate walking in
place [31]). While those walking devices provide a realistic sensation
of walking in the virtual world, they are bulky and not affordable for
a wide audience. Abtahi et al [1] recently investigated mechanisms to
increase users perceived walking speed for moving in a large virtual
environment. However, it is not trivial on how to apply their techniques
for visualization navigation. In our research, we focus on physical
walking available through HMD VR devices, however restricted to a
common office size area. Walking has been found to be more efficient
than using a joystick for orientation in VR [18], and has generally been
found to be beneficial for perception and navigation tasks compared to
controller-based interactions [35,56,57]. Walking has also been proven
to be more efficient than standing at a desk for tasks involving visual
search and recalling item locations in space [53].
In contrast to walking, steering metaphors allow the user to navigate
the space without physically movement. They are usually gaze- and/or
controller-based. Teleportation is a very common locomotion technique
which consists of casting a ray from a tracked controller to the desired
location [44] and a button push to travel there. Bowman et al. [12] found
that hand-based steering was more efficient than gaze-based travel,
but that instant teleportation (with no transition between initial and
final location) was detrimental for orientation compared to continuous
viewpoint change. Laviola et al. [37] argue that continuous uncontrolled
movements of the viewpoint induce cybersickness, but that it can be
mitigated if the transition is very fast. Modern teleportation techniques
use fade or blinking metaphors where the screen transitions to black
before the move and is restored at the destination position. In all the
conditions of our experiment we allow this type of teleportation to
allow the user to fast track travel in the virtual environment if needed.
An alternative VR navigation technique is WIM [43, 63], which
introduces a “minimap” to allow the user to teleport by selecting a
target position in the miniature. Recent refinements offer scalable,
scrollable WIMs (SSWIMs) [71], or support for selecting the optimal
viewpoint in dense occluded scenes [65]. We designed an embodied
placement for WIM, and two different teleportation methods with WIM.
In summary the effects of spatial memory, cybersickness and overall
usability of such techniques have been studied in general purpose
VR applications. In the context of abstract visualization their relative
drawbacks and benefits are unclear.
2.3 Immersive Analytics and Space Navigation
3D scatterplots have received significant attention in Immersive Ana-
lytics research [2, 21, 25,32, 52]. Raja et al. [54] found that using body
motion and head-tracking in a CAVE-like environment was beneficial
compared to non-immersive environments for low-level scatterplot
tasks (i.e., cluster detection, distance estimation, point value estima-
tion and outlier detection). Kraus et al. [32] explored the effect of
immersion for identifying clusters with scatterplots. They explored a
2D scatterplot matrix and 3D on-screen, and immersive table-size and
room-size spaces. Overall their found that the VR conditions were well
suited to the task. However they also pointed out that their room-size
condition may not have been optimal due to the lack of an overview.
Body movements have been observed in Immersive Analytics stud-
ies involving 3D scatterplots, which may indicate potential benefits for
data exploration and presentation. For example, Prouzeau et al. [52]
observed that some participants tended to put their heads inside 3D
scatterplots to explore hidden features; Batch et al. [7] observed par-
ticipants organize their visualizations in a gallery-style setup and walk
through them to report their findings. Simpson et al. [61] informally
studied walking versus rotating in place for navigating a 3D scatterplot,
and their preliminary result indicated that participants with low spatial
memory were more efficient in the walking condition.
Other alternatives to walking in a room-size environment have also
been explored. Filhio et al. [66] found that a seated VR setup for 3D
scatterplots performed better than on a desktop screen. Satriadi et
al. [59] tested different hand gesture interactions (user standing still) to
pan and zoom 2.5D maps in Augmented Reality, but the visualizations
were within a fixed 2D viewport in the 3D space.
Flying is a steering metaphor that has been used as an alternative to
walking to obtain a detailed view of an immersive visualization. With
flying, benefits of immersion were found compared to a 2D view for
Fig. 2. Our study compares two main effects, leading to four conditions.
distance evaluation tasks in scatterplots [67]. Sorger et al. [62] designed
an overview+detail immersive 3D graph navigation metaphor that uses
flying to gain an overview, and a tracked controller-based teleport to a
selected node position to obtain details from a node-centric perspective.
The main takeaway of their informal expert-study is that overviews
were perceived as important to keep the user oriented in the graph.
To our knowledge, WIMs have been underexplored in immersive
data visualization. Nam et al. [46] introduced the Worlds-in-Wedges
technique that combines multiple virtual environments simultaneously
to support context switching for forest visualization. The study of
Drogemuller et al. [23] was the first to formally evaluate one and
two-handed flying vs. teleportation and WIM in the context of large
immersive 3D node-link diagrams [23]. They found that the flying
methods were faster and preferred compared to teleportation and WIMs,
for node finding and navigation tasks in the 3D graph. However, they
did not test the condition where the user only walks around the room
without instrumented metaphors for overview+detail.
Finally, scaling the visualization as a 3D object in VR via bimanual
interaction has been used in Immersive Analytics systems [30,68] but
not formally studied against other VR navigation techniques. In sum-
mary, there is evidence that overview+detail and zooming are beneficial
for navigating 2D visualizations. However, their relative benefit in the
context of immersive 3D scatterplots is still underexplored.
3 ST UDY RATIONALE AND DESIGNS
Our study is intended to address the gaps in the literature described
above in terms of how to carry over well understood 2D navigation
techniques to immersive visualizations (see Fig. 2). We decided to
not include 2D interfaces for 3D scatterplots as testing conditions, as
the 2D alternatives (i.e., scatterplot matrix and 3D scatterplot on a 2D
screen) have been tested to be less effective than representing them as
3D scatterplots in an immersive environment [32].
We focus on adapting zoom and overview+detail techniques. We
did not include focus+context in our study, as it has been shown that
such spatial distortion techniques are not effective for large 2D display
spaces [55], and we expect similar results in the immersive environ-
ments. However, formal confirmation of this is worthwhile future work.
Adapting overview+detail and zooming techniques to immersive envi-
ronments from 2D interfaces requires many design decisions. In the
following, we describe our design considerations and choices.
3.1 Overview+Detail
The idea of the overview+detail is to provide two separate display
spaces representing the same information but at different scales. The
basic design of our overview is straightforward: the whole information
space in which the user is standing is represented in a cube – with all
data glyphs scaled down appropriately. However, three essential design
choices remain unanswered: placement of the overview; Point of View
(PoV) indicator in the overview; and overview teleportation.
Placement of the overview:
In 2D display environments, the overview
is commonly placed at a global fixed position relative to the display:
either at a corner of the detail view (e.g., some on-line maps) or outside
the detail view (e.g., some text editors, PowerPoint). When using the
overview on a 2D display, the user’s Field of View (FoV) is consistent
and can cover the full display space at all times. Thus, the user can
easily access the overview at any time in this placement. Unlike 2D
displays, in an immersive environment, the user is expected to perform
more body movement. As a result, the user’s FoV is constantly chang-
ing. If the overview is placed at a fixed global position in immersive
environments, the user may forget its location or it may not be reachable
when required. In general, the overview needs to be easily accessible
so it can be brought into focus for close inspection, but by default it
should not occlude the users’ view of the main scene. A logical design
choice is to place the overview somewhere at the periphery of the users’
view by default, but allow the user to grab it with the controller to bring
Fig. 3. Enlarging and shrinking the overview with arm movement.
Fig. 4. Demonstration of point-and-click teleportation.
pcurrent
(the green
dot) is the current position of the user;
pAoI
(the blue dot) is the position
of Area of Interest (AoI) and the clicked position; and
ptele port
(the yellow
dot) is the position the user will teleport to.
it up for close inspection. But there remains the question of what is the
best default location relative to the user.
Our first idea was to place the overview at a fixed position relative to
the FoV, i.e., the overview follows the user’s movement, e.g., to always
appear at the bottom right corner of the user’s FoV. We tested it with
two participants; both of them reported the overview to be distracting
and cluttered. They also found it difficult to access (grab) the overview.
We then attached the overview to the user’s off-hand controller. This
was inspired by WIM where the miniature is associated with a tracked
physical board [43, 63], and Mine et al. [45] who attached widgets to
virtual hands in VR. To further reduce visual clutter, we shrink the
overview by default and allow the user to enlarge the overview by
touching it with the other controller. This embodied design allows
users to enlarge or shrink the overview by simple hand movements (see
Fig. 3). We tested it with another participant, and explicitly asked if
she felt the overview caused visual clutter, was distracting, or difficult
to access. The participant was highly positive about the new design.
PoV indicator in the overview:
In 2D overview+detail interfaces, a
FoV box is used to indicate which portion of the overview is presented
in the detail view. Similarly, in WIM, it is also important to indicate
the view position, but in addition the direction the user is facing [63].
Following their designs, we use a cube to represent the tracked headset.
The position and rotation of the cube are synchronized with the headset
in real-time. We also use a semi-transparent cone attached to the cube
to represent the user’s view direction (see Fig. 3).
Overview teleportation:
Tight coupling between the overview and
detail views is standard in 2D interfaces (e.g., [29, 72]). The aim is
to allow the user to change the portion of the scene presented in the
detail view by interacting with the overview. There are two widely
used implementations: drag-and-drop and point-and-click interactions.
Changing the detail view in 2D interfaces is equivalent to changing the
viewing point and direction in immersive environments. We adapted
the 2D interactions for immersive environments:
Drag-and-drop teleportation: On 2D interfaces, the user can select
the FoV box in the overview then drag-and-drop it at a new position in
the overview. The detail view will then switch to the new position. In
immersive environments, WIM allows participants “pick themselves
up”, i.e., the user can pick up the PoV indicator and drag it to a new
position in the overview to teleport to the dropped location in the detail
view. We implemented the same mechanism in our visualizations.
Point-and-click teleportation: The user can also directly choose
the destination and explicitly trigger a command to change the detail
view. On 2D interfaces, the operation involves pointing a cursor at the
destination position in the overview and then clicking to translate the
detail view. In immersive environments, in addition to changing the
position of the user, we also need to adjust the user’s orientation. We
implemented a mechanism that will determine the user’s position and
orientation (see Fig. 4). Basically, the teleport target position is on the
straight line connecting the current position and the Area of Interest
Fig. 5. The gesture to zoom and rotate simultaneously. From left to right:
scale up the object and rotate clockwise; from right to left: scale down
the object and rotate anti-clockwise.
(AoI), but slightly away from the AoI to ensure it is within the user’s
FoV. The orientation is the direction of this straight line.
Drag-and-drop teleportation is expected to give users more control of
their position and orientation and possibly give them a better estimation
of their position and orientation after the teleportation. However, this
multi-step operation is not welcomed by all users [33]. Point-and-click
teleportation requires less steps, but may increase the gap between the
expected and actual teleported position and rotation. Like many other
2D interfaces, we include both mechanisms in our visualizations, to let
users choose their preferred option.
3.2 Zooming
Although 2D desktop interfaces usually use the scroll-to-zoom
metaphor, pinch-to-zoom is the standard zooming gesture on most
multi-touch devices. The idea of pinch-to-zoom is to re-scale according
to the distance between two touch points [28]. Immersive systems
can naturally be considered as multi-touch systems as they are capable
of tracking at least two hand-held controllers. Therefore, we use the
pinch-to-zoom gesture in our visualizations.
The naive implementation of pinch-to-zoom in immersive environ-
ments (i.e., only scaling the size of the object) shifts the positions of
the controllers relative to the object. As a result, inconsistency is intro-
duced between the interaction and the displayed information, which
confuses the user. To address this issue, we integrate rotation into the
same gesture, i.e., the rotation of the manipulated object is based on the
direction between the two touch points while zooming. Additionally,
we apply adjusted 3D translation to the object to ensure the positions
of the controllers relative to the zoomable object are preserved in the
interaction (i.e., latching). The simultaneous zoom and rotate gesture
in the 3D immersive environment is demonstrated in Fig. 5. A similar
concept is also widely used on 2D multi-touch zooming interfaces, e.g.,
photo editing interfaces on mobile phones.
4 USER ST UDY
We pre-registered our user study at
https://osf.io/ycz5x
. We also
include results of statistical tests as supplementary materials. Test
conditions are also demonstrated in the supplemental video.
4.1 Experimental Conditions
In addition to the two main effects discussed in Sec. 3, we summarize
the characteristics and parameters of test conditions in Tab. 1.
Rm:
To allow the user to explore finely-detailed data, we take advantage
of the large display space in immersive environments and create a room-
sized visualization, see Fig. 1(a). Room-sized design in immersive
environments is considered to be more immersive than table-sized
visualizations [32, 73]. A few types of room-sized visualizations have
been explored, e.g., node-link diagrams [34], egocentric globes [73],
and scatterplots [32, 52]. Room-sized visualizations are expected to
scale better for representing finely detailed data. However, only sub-
parts of the visualization can be seen by the viewer at one time, so that
the user may lose context during exploration.
We use a 3D cube of 2
×
2
×
2 meters as the display space of the room-
sized visualization. Manipulating a large display space in an immersive
environment is likely to introduce strong motion sickness [73]. We
therefore keep the position and rotation of the display space fixed.
Participants can freely move by walking (a few steps) within the space
as well as use pointer teleportation, i.e., the user can use a pointer to
choose the destination on the floor and then click the controller button to
teleport to the destination in the immersive environment. Such pointer
teleportation is now a standard locomotion mechanism in major VR
platforms (like Oculus, SteamVR and Windows Mixed Reality). We
Factor Rm RmO Zm ZmO
Overview+Detail
Zooming ✔ ✔
Visualization
Number of views 1 2 1 2
Size 2 m Overview : 40 cm
Detail view : 2 m 60 cm Overview : 40 cm
Detail view : 60 cm
Resize
Overview :
Detail view :
Overview :
Detail view :
Grab
Overview :
Detail view :
Overview :
Detail view :
Locomotion
Physical movement ✔ ✔ ✔ ✔
Pointer teleportation ✔ ✔
Overview teleportation
Table 1. Characteristics and parameters of test visualizations.
enable this standard functionality in all our tested conditions. This is
the only support for navigation in this condition.
RmO:
In this condition, in addition to
Rm
, we provide an overview of
the display space, see Fig. 1(b). The detail view of
RmO
is the same as
Rm
. The overview is a 3D cube of 40
×
40
×
40 centimeters when it is
enlarged (see Fig. 3). The default size of the overview is 10
×
10
×
10
centimeters. Participants can grab the overview by moving a hand-held
controller inside and hold the trigger button. The overview will then
attach to this controller. Moving and rotating the controller will also
move and rotate the overview. We did not allow participants to resize
the overview, as it would increase the complexity of the interactions.
Participants can teleport using the overview as discussed in Sec. 3.1.
Zm:
The visualization is initially table-sized (60
×
60
×
60 centimeters),
and participants can use the pinch-to-zoom gesture (described in Sec.
3.2) for resizing, see Fig. 1(c). The small initial size allows participants
to have an overview of the information first, which is recognized as the
standard analytic workflow. We also allow participants to grab the view
and manipulate it with a hand-held controller.
ZmO:
In this condition, in addition to
Zm
, we provide an overview of the
zooming view, see Fig. 1(d). The detail view of
ZmO
is the same as
Zm
(with an initial size of 60
×
60
×
60 centimeters), and the overview is the
same as it is in
RmO
(with an enlarged size of 40
×
40
×
40 centimeters
and default size of 10×10×10 centimeters).
4.2 Experimental Setup
We used a Samsung Odyssey virtual reality headset with a 110
°
field
of view, 2160
×
1200 pixels resolution and 90 Hz refresh rate. The PC
was equipped with an Intel i7-9750H 2.6 GHz processor and NVIDIA
GeForce RTX 2060 graphics card. The study took place in a space with
approximate 2.5×2.5 meters (6.25 m2).
Following feedback from our pilot user study and as a common
practice for reducing motion sickness in VR [42, 73], we created an
external reference frame, which is a 4×4 meters virtual floor.
Rm
and the detail view of
RmO
shared the same center of the physical
room. Their orientations were identical in the whole study.
Zm
and the
detail view of
ZmO
were placed 50 centimeters in front of the user’s
head position and 50 centimeters below it. This setup allows users to
easily reach the visualization and keep the full visualization within their
FoV at the beginning of each trial. We repositioned and resized the
visualization at the beginning of every trial. We also asked participants
to move back to the center before the start of every trial.
4.3 Data
We used MNIST [38], a real-world handwritten digits database to gen-
erate point cloud data. For each data set, we first randomly sampled
5,000 images as data points , and then used t-SNE [40] to calculate their
projected 3D positions (i.e., 5,000 points per scatterplot). The t-SNE
technique projects high-dimensional data into two or three dimensions.
In our case, we used TensorFlow’s projection tool [64] as the implemen-
tation of t-SNE to project 784 dimensions (28
×
28 pixels) per image
to three dimensions. We kept the default parameters and executed 800
iterations per data set, which has been tested to be sufficient for getting
Fig. 6. Example stimuli for three task conditions. The labels are only for demonstration purposes. (a,b) Distance: participants had to estimate which
pair of colored points (yellow or red) has the larger spatial distance. The distance within each pair varies in (a) and (b) to be relatively close and far
respectively. (c) Count: participants had to find which group of colored points (yellow, red or blue) has the largest number of points.
a stable layout. We used different data sets for all trials. In total, we
generated 60 data sets (4 for visualization training trials, 16 for task
training trials, and 40 for study trials). All points are colored gray,
except the red-, yellow-, and blue-colored targets in tasks. Points in
the scatterplot were rendered as spheres with 3 cm diameter in
Rm
and
the detail view of
RmO
. The size of the points was proportional in other
representations. Sample data is shown in Fig. 6.
4.4 Tasks
Sarikaya and Gleicher proposed a task taxonomy for scatterplots. This
identified three types of high-level tasks: object-centric, browsing, and
aggregate-level [58]. Instead of investigating fine detailed informa-
tion, browsing and aggregate-level tasks are looking at general patterns,
trends or correlations. These types of tasks require relatively less navi-
gation effort, and participants preferred small-sized display spaces for
some of these tasks [32]. To better understand the navigation perfor-
mance, we intended to select tasks that require relatively significant
navigation efforts. For our user study, we chose two object-centric tasks
that require the participant to navigate to the fine detailed data.
Distance:
Which of the point pairs are further away from each other:
the red pair or the yellow pair? Comparing distance is representative
of a variety of low-level visualization tasks, e.g., identifying outliers
and clusters. These tasks are also essential parts of high-level analy-
sis processes, e.g., identifying misclassified cases and understanding
their spatial correlation with different nearby classes in the embedding
representation of a machine-learning system. Variations of this task
have been studied in most of the studies we reviewed [2, 32, 52, 67,70].
Among them, we directly adopted this task from Bach et al [2]. Similar
to their study, we had two target pairs: one pair was colored red, and
the other pair was colored yellow (see Fig. 6 (a,b)). The point cloud
was dense yet sparse enough that the target points could be identified
without the need for interactions other than changing the viewing direc-
tion. In all conditions, the participants had to first search for the targets
and then compare their 3D distance by moving/teleporting around the
space and/or rotating the visualization when available (see Tab. 1).
Participants needed to choose from two choices: red or yellow.
Whether the two points in a pair can be both presented in the FoV
can be a key factor affecting the performance in immersive visualiza-
tions [73]. We investigated this factor by creating two categories of
distance:
Close
and
Far
. In
Close
, the larger distance of the pair was
controlled to be 25% of side length of the view (e.g., 0.5 meters in
Rm
).
In
Far
, we controlled this parameter to be 75% (e.g., 1.5 meters in
Rm
).
We also controlled the difference between the distances of the two pairs
to be 10%. We expect a small difference can potentially encourage
participants to verify their answers from different viewing positions and
directions and thus increase the number of navigations. For the same
reason, we placed each pair far away from the other pair (i.e., they had a
distance of 75% of the side length of the view, for example, 1.5 meters
in
Rm
). We developed an automatic strategy to select the points to meet
all controlling requirements. We first repeatedly randomly select a pair
of points from the 5000 points in a data set until the pair meets the
distance requirement for
Close
or
Far
and then keep randomly selecting
the other pair until all other requirements are met.
Count:
Which group has the largest number of points: the red group,
the yellow group, or the blue group? This task is essential for pro-
cesses that require the understanding of numerosity, e.g., counting the
number of misclassified cases or cases with specific properties for a
classification system. Again, variations of this task have been studied
in some of the studies we reviewed [2,67, 70]. We created three groups
of points, which were colored in red, yellow, and blue (see Fig. 6 (c)).
The points in a group were close to each other to form a small cluster.
Points could partially overlap with each other, but we made sure that
the number of points is unambiguous. The participant has to first search
for the groups and then sequentially get close to each group to count
the number of points within that group. In all conditions, participants
can move or teleport around the space. In
Zm
and
ZmO
, participants also
need to enlarge the view to count the points. Participants are not able
to count the points in the overview in
RmO
and
ZmO
due to its small size.
Participants need to choose from three choices: red, yellow, or blue.
The number of points in a group varied from 5 to 10. Again, to
increase the potential number of navigation steps needed to complete
this task, we placed groups far apart from each other (approximate 50%
of the side length of the view, that is, e.g., one meter in
Rm
). Unlike in
the Distance tasks where we used an automatic process to select targets,
in the Count task, such method may produce ambiguous overlapping
cases. Instead, we manually selected groups of points for each trial.
4.5 Participants
We recruited 20 participants (14 females and six males) from Harvard
University. All had a normal or corrected-to-normal vision, were right-
handed, and all were college students. All participants were within
the age range of 20
30. VR experience varied: three participants
had no experience before this user study; ten participants had 0
5
hours experience; four participants had 5
20 hours experience, and
three participants had more than 20 hours of experience. Most of
our participants do not play computer/video/mobile games frequently:
17 participants reported they played less than 2 hours of games per
week, and the other three participants played 2
5 hours per week. We
provided a $20 gift card as compensation for each participant.
4.6 Design and Procedures
The experiment followed a full-factorial within-subject design. We
used a Latin square (4 groups) to balance the visualizations, but kept
the ordering of tasks consistent: Distance then Count. The experiment
lasted 1.5 hours on average. Each participant completed 40 study trials:
4 VR conditions ×(3 Distance-Close +3Distance-Far +4Count)
Participants were first given a brief introduction to the experiment
and VR headset. After putting on the VR headset, we asked them
to adjust it to see the sample text in front of them clearly. We then
conducted a general VR training session to teach participants how to
move in VR space and how to manipulate a virtual object. First, we
asked participants to move for a certain distance physically. Then
we told them to touch the touchpad to enable the pointer and click
the touchpad to teleport. We asked participants to get familiar with
the pointer teleportation with a few more teleportations. At the final
stage of the pointer teleportation training, we asked them to teleport
to a place marked with a green circle on the floor. We then asked
the participants to grab a green cube by putting the controller inside
the cube and holding the trigger button. The participants finished the
training session by placing the green cube at a new indicated position
with a specific rotation. All participants completed the training and
reported that they were familiar with the instructed interactions. The
training session took around 5 minutes.
We conducted a visualization training session every time a partic-
ipant encountered a visualization condition for the first time. In the
training session, we introduced the available interactions and asked
participants to get familiar with them with no time limit. Each con-
dition (visualization
×
task) started with 2 training trials followed by
timed study trials. Before each trial, we re-positioned participants to
the room’s center and faced them in a consistent direction. In the train-
ing trials, participants were not informed about specific strategies for
completing the task but were encouraged to explore their own strategies.
The correct answer was presented to them after they had selected an
answer in the training trials. If a participant answered incorrectly, we
asked the them to review the training trial and verify their strategies.
After each task, participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire
regarding their strategies in each visualization, their subjective ratings
of confidence, mental and physical demands of each visualization, and
to rank the visualizations based on their preference. We had a 5-minute
break between two tasks. After completing two tasks, participants were
asked to fill another survey rating the overall usability and discussing
the pros and cons of each visualization. The demographic information
was collected at the end of the user study. The questionnaire listed
visualizations in the same order as presented in the experiment.
4.7 Measures
We measured time from the first rendering of the visualization to a
double-click of the controller trigger. After the double-click, the visual-
ization was replaced by a multiple-choice panel with task description
and options. Participants’ choice was compared to the correct answer
for their accuracy. We recorded the position and rotation of the headset,
controllers, and visualizations every 0.2 seconds. We also recorded
the number of different interactions participants conducted in each
study trial, including teleportation and zooming. We also collected
the overview usage percentage, which is the percentage of time the
participant was looking at the overview of each study trial. The size
of both
Zm
and
ZmO
were also collected every 0.2 seconds. In the pilot
study, we also asked participants to report the level of motion sickness
they experienced in each condition. All participants reported the mini-
mal level of motion sickness for all conditions. This could be because
that the participant’s FoV was not fully occupied at any time, and the
participant could easily access the visual reference (the floor). Thus,
we decided to not record the motion sickness level in the formal study.
4.8 Statistical Analysis
For dependent variables or their transformed values that can meet
the normality assumption, we used linear mixed modeling to evaluate
the effect of independent variables on the dependent variables [8].
Compared to repeated measure ANOVA, linear mixed modeling is
capable of modeling more than two levels of independent variables and
does not have the constraint of sphericity [24, Ch. 13]. We modeled all
independent variables and their interactions as fixed effects. A within-
subject design with random intercepts was used for all models. We
evaluated the significance of the inclusion of an independent variable
or interaction terms using log-likelihood ratio. We then performed
Tukey’s HSD post-hoc tests for pair-wise comparisons using the least
square means [39]. We used predicted vs. residual and Q — Q plots to
graphically evaluate the homoscedasticity and normality of the Pearson
residuals respectively. For other dependent variables that cannot meet
the normality assumption, we used a Friedman test to evaluate the
effect of the independent variable, as well as a Wilcoxon-Nemenyi-
McDonald-Thompson test for pair-wise comparisons. Significance
values are reported for
p< .05()
,
p< .01(∗∗)
, and
p< .001(∗∗∗)
,
respectively, abbreviated by the number of stars in parenthesis.
Fig. 7. Results for time (seconds) and accuracy by task. Confidence in-
tervals indicate 95% confidence for mean values. A dashed line indicates
statistical significance for p< .05.
Fig. 8. Camera movement distance per task trial. A dashed line indicates
statistical significance for p< .05.
5 RE SU LTS
In this section, we first summarize self-reported strategies, then provide
a pairwise comparison of performance (task time and accuracy) with
the different visualization conditions. Finally we discuss interactions,
user preference, and qualitative feedback.
5.1 How did participants complete the tasks?
We asked participants to describe their strategies after each task. We
found participants’ strategies were relatively consistent.
The distance task:
In
Rm
, most participants (14 out of 20) stayed
within the visualization space, within which, four participants explicitly
mentioned that they used the pointer to “jump” to the center of a pair
of points as well as the center of two pairs. Six other participants stated
they teleported outside the visualization space to have a better overview
first, and then teleported back to the visualization space.
In
RmO
, most participants (13 out of 20) mentioned they mainly used
the overview to find points. Eight participants used the overview to
estimate the distance first, and then confirmed the answer in the detail
view. 11 participants reported that they used the overview to teleport.
Four participants used the same strategy they used in
Rm
to teleport to
the center of a pair of points as well as the center of two pairs.
In
Zm
, most participants (17 out of 20) tried to find points in the
small-sized view, and then compared the distance with an enlarged
view. Other participants completed tasks with only small-sized views.
In
ZmO
, most participants (18 out of 20) used the most popular
strategy in
Zm
, i.e., using the small-sized view to find points, and
comparing distances with an enlarged view. In which, seven participants
mentioned that they sometimes used the overview to teleport when the
visualization was enlarged. Two other participants kept the visualization
small all the time to answer the questions.
The count task:
In
Rm
, most participants (14 out of 20) mainly phys-
ically walked to the place of interest in the space while the other six
participants reported they mainly used pointer teleportation.
In
RmO
, most participants (17 out of 20) mainly used the overview to
teleport. Two other participants mainly used pointer teleportation, and
one participant mainly walked.
Fig. 9. Number of interactions per task trial. The number of interactions is considered to be the sum of number of teleportations and number of
zoomings. A dashed line indicates statistical significance for p< .05.
Fig. 10. Average usage of the overview per trial. A dashed line indicates
statistical significance for p< .05.
In
Zm
, most participants (16 out of 20) zoomed in and out to reach
different groups. Three other participants first enlarged the visualiza-
tion, then grabbed and moved the view to get to groups. One participant
first zoomed in and then used the pointer to teleport to groups.
In
ZmO
, most participants (14 out of 20) zoomed in and out to com-
plete the task and stated that they did not use the overview much. Six
other participants first enlarged the visualization, and then used the
overview to teleport to groups.
5.2 Is having an overview beneficial?
Rm vs. RmO:
We found
Rm
was faster in the Count task (
∗∗
).
Rm
also
tended to be faster in the other tasks, but the differences were not
statistically significant. We also found
RmO
was more accurate in the
Distance-Close task (
), see Fig. 7. We believe the improved accuracy
may come from the fact that the overview provided a different perspec-
tive as well as a different scale for the participants to confirm their
answers. Eight participants explicitly reported using the overview for
the distance comparison (see Sec. 5.1). We also found participants felt
more confident with
RmO
than
Rm
in the Distance task (
∗∗
, see Fig. 14)
which aligned with their higher accuracy in RmO.
Zm vs. ZmO:
We found similar performance between
Zm
and
ZmO
, except
that
ZmO
was slower than
Zm
in the Distance-Far task condition (
, see
Fig. 7). The very similar performance may because participants only
use the overview occasionally in
ZmO
. Apart from the overview,
Zm
and
ZmO
share the same view and interactions. The limited use of
the overview in
ZmO
can be confirmed from both the users’ strategy
(see Sec. 5.1), and the fact that participants only spent around 10% on
average of their time looking at the overview (see Fig. 10). This finding
aligned with the results from Nekrasovski et al. [47] where they found
that presence of an overview did not affect the performance of a 2D
zoomable hierarchical visualization (rubber sheet).
Summary:
Overall, adding an overview can increase task accuracy in
some tasks, but may also introduce extra time cost. We also found an
overview seems to be unnecessary in Zm, and adding one may even be
distracting or disturbing for difficult tasks (e.g., the Distance-Far task).
Due to the very similar performance between
Zm
and
ZmO
, we did not
include ZmO in the following pair-wise comparisons explicitly.
5.3 Visualization manipulation vs. Move (Zm vs. Rm)
We found
Zm
was slower than
Rm
in the Count task (
∗∗∗
). It tended to be
slower in the Distance-Close task but not significantly.
Zm
and
Rm
had
similar time performance in the Distance-Far task. Our results partially
align with the results from Lages and Bowman [35]. They found that the
performance of walking and object manipulation in VR was affected
by the gaming experience of participants. In essence, participants
without significant gaming experience performed better with physical
movement, while 3D manipulation enabled higher performance for
participants with gaming experience. Most of our participants reported
having no significant gaming experience (17 out of 20 play less than
2 hours of games per week). However, due to the limited number of
participants with gaming experience in our user study, we are unable to
draw statistical conclusions about this effect.
5.4 Zooming vs. Overview+Detail (Zm vs. RmO)
We found
Zm
and
RmO
had similar time performance in the easier tasks
(i.e., the Distance-Close and Count tasks), and
Zm
was faster than
RmO
in the difficult task (i.e., the Distance-Far tasks,
, see Fig. 7). Previous
user studies on 2D displays also found a similar time performance be-
tween these two types of interfaces (e.g., [51,55]) in simple navigation
tasks. We also found
RmO
was more accurate in the Distance-Close task
(
). This finding is partially aligned with the study by Plumlee and
Ware [51] where they also found overview+detail increased the accu-
racy compared to a zooming interface on a 2D display. They suggested
that the benefit may be due to reduced visual working memory load by
having an extra view in the overview+detail interface.
5.5 How did participants move and interact?
We found that participants had significantly more camera movement
in
Rm
and
RmO
than in
Zm
and
ZmO
(all
∗ ∗ ∗
).
Rm
also required more
camera movement than
RmO
in the Distance-Far task (
∗∗∗
) (see Fig. 8).
Motion parallax is a likely explanation. It is key to depth perception
in immersive environments: a stronger cue than stereopsis, as well as
being key to resolving occlusion. As the size of visualization increases,
you have to move further to get the same motion parallax benefits.
Fig. 11. Size of the zoomable visual-
ization per trial.
We also found participants
teleported significantly more in
Rm
and
RmO
than in
Zm
and
ZmO
(all
∗ ∗ ∗
).
Rm
also required
more camera movement than
RmO
in the Distance-Close and
Distance-Far tasks (
∗∗∗
). Par-
ticipants also performed signif-
icantly more zooming interac-
tions in
Zm
than
ZmO
in the
Count task (
∗∗∗
). The size of
the zooming interface was shown in Fig. 11.
We also added up the number of teleportation and zooming steps
as the number of interactions. We found participants performed more
interactions in
Rm
than in
RmO
(
) and
Zm
(
∗ ∗ ∗
) in the Distance-Far
task. We also found
Zm
and
ZmO
required more interactions than
Rm
and
RmO in the Count task (all ∗∗∗).
In summary, we found that overview or zoom reduced the number of
required movements and teleportation compared to standard locomotion
support alone. We also found
Zm
and
ZmO
needed a significant amount
of pinch-to-zoom interactions in the Count tasks.
5.6 Which condition did participants prefer?
We asked participants to rank visualizations according to their prefer-
ence for each task (see Fig. 12). For both the Distance and Count tasks,
we found participants preferred
Zm
(
∗ ∗ ∗
) and
RmO
(
) over
Rm
. We also
found
Zm
was preferred over
RmO
(
). Participants also rated the overall
usability (see Fig. 13). We found the
Rm
was considered to have lower
usability than RmO (∗∗), Zm (∗∗∗) and ZmO ().
Zm
tended to be the most preferred visualization in our user study
with more than 50% of participants ranking it best in both tasks (see
Fig. 12).
Zm
was also reported to be less demanding (see Fig. 14).
Rm
was not preferred by our participants, even though it generally
Fig. 12. User preference ranking of each condition for two tasks (Distance
and Count). Dashed lines indicate p< .05.
Fig. 13. Overall usability ratings. Dashed lines indicate
p< .05
. Percent-
age of negative and positive rankings is shown next to the bars.
performed well (see Fig. 7). There could be two possible reasons: First,
participants felt
Rm
was more physical demanding (see Fig. 14) and
the recorded movement data confirmed their subjective feeling (see
Fig. 8). Second, with a fixed large scale single-view visualization,
Rm
was expected to have a high visual working memory load. The
higher number of interactions and movements in
Rm
partially supports
this assumption. Subjectively, participants also rated
Rm
to be more
mentally demanding than Zm () and ZmO () in the Count task.
5.7 Qualitative user feedback
We asked participants to give feedback on the pros and cons of each
design. We clustered comments into groups for each visualization.
In this subsection, we demonstrate representative ones along with the
number of participants mentioned these similar comments.
Rm
was mentioned to be “close to real life” by 11 participants.
Among them, four participants explicitly reported it to be “immersive”,
three participants felt “more engaged”, and three participants liked its
fixed view: “it is easier to remember the points, whether in front or
behind me. However, ten participants also reported “it is difficult to
find the points sometimes.
RmO
was considered an improvement over
Rm
. 15 participants re-
ported that “the minimap was really useful for finding the points and
moving around. Three participants also stated that “it is really good to
have two scales [of views] at the same time. However, two participants
felt “overwhelmed” by the interactions. Another two complained that
“it breaks spatial continuity [when teleporting with the overview].
Zm
was found to be “intuitive” and “easy to use” by 11 participants.
Among them, three participants mentioned that they like the “flexibil-
ity” of the interaction and feel they have “more control”. One also
commented that “it solves the problem of distance in a continuous way.
Without losing the reference. However, three commented it to be “not
feeling real [comparing to
Rm
and
RmO
].Two others mentioned: “I
may lose perspective after I move or zoom the view multiple times.
ZmO
was mainly compared to
Zm
. Six participants found “the min-
imap was good to jump around. However, 12 participants commented
that “I did not use the minimap much. Five participants also com-
plained that “it can be confusing as you have too many choices.
5.8 Summary
Of the four navigation methods that we tested, we found some signifi-
cant differences in participant performance across the different tasks.
However, there was no one navigation method that was best for ev-
ery task. The overview increased accuracy for the
Rm
condition in the
Distance-Close task, however, the overview seemed to be an unneces-
sary distraction in the other tasks, and provided no benefit to the
Zm
condition.
Zm
was faster in the most difficult task (i.e., the Distance-Far
task). Participants also clearly did not like the Rm condition.
6 DISCUSSION AND NAVIGATION TIME-COST MOD EL
Our study did not find a single best navigation method. In particular,
analysis of the time data did not reveal a clear winner: for instance,
Zm
was faster in the Distance-Far task but slower in the Count task.
Furthermore, we found that
Rm
performed generally well in terms of
Fig. 14. Confidence, mental demand, and physical demand ratings in
a five-point-Likert scale for two tasks. Dashed lines indicate
p< .05
.
Percentage of negative and positive rankings is shown next to the bars.
time, but participants, for instance, complained about the difficulty of
finding targets. This should have introduced extra time costs, but this
was not reflected in the overall time.
To provide a more nuanced understanding of these mixed results,
we now provide an initial exploratory analysis of the timing re-
sults based on previously suggested models of time cost for naviga-
tion [13, 48, 50, 51] and interactive visualization [36, 69]. Navigation
is a complex process with multiple components and the relevance of
these components will vary in different tasks. By considering the cost
of each component separately, we hope to better explain our results.
For example, while participants might spend more time identifying
the targets with
Rm
, they may spend less time on other components,
thereby compensating for this loss. Based on the literature, the four
most essential components in models of navigation time-cost are:
Wayfinding
(term from [13, 48]): This is the process of finding the
destination. Similar to decision costs to form goals in [36].
Travel
(term from [13, 48]): This is the process of “moving” to the
destination. It can be walking, teleportation or manipulating the visual-
ization to the desired form. Similar to physical-motion costs to execute
sequences in [36] and transit between visits in [50, 51]
Number-of-travels
(term from [50,51]): Due to limited visual working
memory [69], completing a task can involve more than one travel to
access information or to confirm the answer.
Context-switching
(term from [69]): When the perceived view
changes (either through physical movement or manipulating the vi-
sualization), the user must re-interpret it based on expectation. Similar
to view-change costs to interpret perception in [36].
In the rest of this section, we first analyze our visualization condi-
tions with our navigation time-cost model. We then discuss the relative
importance of the components in our two tasks. Finally, we summarize
our discussion by demonstrating how we can use our model to suggest
visualization techniques for different tasks. We also demonstrate how
we can use this model to identify the specific performance bottleneck
of a visualization, and then propose potential strategies to improve it.
6.1 Visualization Analysis
In this subsection, we analyze the time cost (or performance) of our
visualization conditions in terms of the above components. The results
of our analysis are demonstrated in Fig. 15.
Wayfinding:
The overview in
RmO
could better facilitate the process
of identifying targets compared to
Rm
. Participants’ comments con-
firmed this, where 12 out of 20 mentioned “it is much easier to find
the points [in
RmO
] with the minimap [, rather than in
Rm
].For the
same reason, we believe that the overview in
ZmO
can better support
identifying targets compared to
Zm
, especially when the visualization
is enlarged.
Zm
supports searching targets in its small-sized state well.
This is confirmed by the users’ strategy where most participants located
targets with size-reduced (or zoomed-out)
Zm
(see Sec. 5.1). However,
participants lose the overview once they enlarge the visualization. Par-
ticipants clearly had difficulties in finding the targets in
Rm
(see Sec. 5.7).
In summary, we suggest that the time-cost of our tested visualizations
in wayfinding is ordered as: RmO <ZmO <Zm <Rm.
Fig. 15. Navigation time-cost of our tested conditions broken down into
four navigation components. Positions are relative and qualitative, not
based on precise metrics.
Travel:
We believe, in our relatively small-sized testing environment,
physical movement in
Rm
might take less time than
Zm
. Familiarity
with natural walking could make
Rm
outperform the relatively unnat-
ural pinch-to-zoom gesture of
Zm
(i.e., people are unable to rescale a
physical object in real life). This assumption was partially confirmed
by previous studies (e.g., the ones reviewed by Ball et al. [6]) where
physical movement gives better time performance using visualizations
on large tiled displays. In
Rm
, apart from physical movement, we also
provide pointer teleportation. However, pointer teleportation can only
ease transit if the destination is within the users’ FoV. In
RmO
, the users
can teleport to a place outside their FoV using the overview. Compared
to
Rm
,
RmO
has a more flexible teleportation mechanism, which should
result in a faster transit. For the same reason, we believe
ZmO
could
outperform
Zm
in travel. In summary, we suggest that the time-cost of
our tested visualizations in travel is ordered as:
RmO <Rm <ZmO <Zm
.
Number-of-travels:
We use recorded interaction data as a proxy mea-
sure of the number-of-travels. Overall,
Rm
clearly required significantly
more physical movement and teleportations than other visualizations
(see Sec. 5.5).
RmO
also required more physical movement and telepor-
tation than
Zm
(see Sec. 5.5). Although
Zm
required a large number of
zooming in the Count task, we believe
RmO
required an overall larger
number of travels. We found that the camera movement was similar
in
Zm
and
ZmO
. Meanwhile,
ZmO
required more teleportation, while
the number of performed zooming interactions was more in
Zm
. In
summary, we suggest that our tested visualizations in number-of-travels
is ordered as: Zm ZmO <RmO <Rm.
Context-switching:
Physical movement is a spatial-continuous activ-
ity, which we consider to induce minimal context-switching costs. We
also consider the “pinch-to-zoom” gesture a spatial-continuous trav-
eling method which has similar performance compared to physical
movement. Instant movement by teleportation introduces spatial dis-
orientation and discontinuity [3, 11]. Furthermore, compared to the
more predictable pointer teleportation where the destination is usually
within the FoV, teleportation with the overview is expected to have a
higher cost. Apart from teleportation, a user can also move based on the
information in the overview (e.g., a user can identify the target is right
of the current viewing direction in the overview and then turn right to
find the target). This operation is also expected to be high-cost, as the
user needs to visually link two separate display spaces. In
Rm
, partici-
pants performed more teleportations than in
Zm
(see Fig. 9), which we
consider inducing greater context-switching costs. Participants also
spent more time with the overview in
RmO
than in
ZmO
(see Fig. 10).
In summary, we suggest the time-cost of our tested visualizations in
context-switching is ordered as: Zm <Rm <ZmO <RmO.
6.2 Task Analysis
Based on the quantitative interaction data, qualitative feedback, and our
observations in the user study, we infer the relative importance of the
time-cost model components for our tested tasks (see Tab. 2).
In the Count task, the targets are groups of points, so they are easy
to find. Therefore, we believe that participants required minimal effort
in wayfinding, and the number of travels is near identical across tested
conditions. The context-switching effort should also be relatively low,
as points in one group were all within the FoV. Thus, participants did
not require frequent switching of views. Participants still needed to
switch views when moving to the next target group, but the number of
such switches is relatively low.
Task Wayfinding Travel # of Travels Context-switching
Distance-Close Medium High Medium Medium
Distance-Far High High High High
Count Low High Low Low
Table 2. Relative importance of time-cost components for tasks.
For the Distance task, there are only four colored targets, so the
target points were more difficult to locate. Participants had to keep
changing their viewing position and direction to find them. Moreover,
the targets were mostly not within the participant’s FoV at the same
time, so participants had to switch views frequently to perform the
comparison. The recorded interaction data shows that the Distance-
Far task required more physical movement than the other two task
conditions in Rm (∗∗∗), RmO (∗∗∗), and ZmO ().
In summary, we suggest that the effort required for wayfinding,
number-of-travels, and context-switching was higher in the Distance
task than in the Count task. Within the Distance task, the Far condition
requires more effort in these three components than the Close condition.
Travel is an essential part in all navigation tasks, and we consider it to
have a high weight in all conditions.
6.3 Suggesting visualizations for tasks
We demonstrate the potential of our navigation time-cost model to
recommend visualization techniques for different tasks. We do this by
explaining the overall time performance using the analysis results from
Sec. 6.1 and 6.2.
For tasks that are less demanding on wayfinding and number-of-
travels (e.g., the Distance-Close and Count tasks in our study),
Rm
is
expected to have a good performance. This is because although
Rm
is not good at these two components, they have a limited amount of
influence. On the other hand,
Rm
shows an overall good performance
on the more important component (i.e., travel). For tasks that require
a significant effort in number-of-travels and context-switch (e.g., the
Distance-Far task in our study), Zm is a good choice, as it outperforms
other conditions on these two components.
RmO
has its advantages for wayfinding and travel, but the high cost in
context-switching significantly influences its performance. For future
studies, we should consider techniques that reduce the effort for context-
switching in
RmO
, e.g., animated teleportation [10, 63], or instead of
always teleporting forwards, allowing users to interactively choose their
viewing direction of the teleportation destination [27]. We also propose
a preliminary idea that when the user selects a target in the overview,
a visual indicator will appear in the detail view to guide the user to
the target. This is inspired by the work from Petford et al. [49], which
reviewed guiding techniques for out-of-view objects.
7 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
We would recommend that developers of immersive visualization sys-
tems provide a variety of navigation methods to suit different tasks and
environments. For example, if the user has the capability to operate
in a large open space, then there are definitely tasks (such as Distance
Close) that will benefit from room-size navigation. However, in seated
VR, the zoom is going to be essential. Our adaptation of the traditional
overview technique may be useful in room-size navigation for tasks
that require operation at different scales, but such an overview should
be easy to hide until required, to prevent distraction.
For future studies, a larger tracking space would support greater
physical navigation but may also cause significant fatigue. Larger,
more complex data may benefit the overview more. We also suggest
that designs that can reduce context-switching cost in overview+detail
interfaces are likely to improve its performance. We also would like to
design studies to verify our navigation time-cost model systematically.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported in part under KAUST Office of Sponsored
Research (OSR) award OSR-2015-CCF-2533-01 and Australian Re-
search Councils Discovery Projects funding scheme DP180100755.
Yalong Yang was supported by a Harvard Physical Sciences and Engi-
neering Accelerator Award. We also wish to thank all our participants
for their time and our reviewers for their comments and feedback.
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Recent developments in technology encourage the use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) as a medium to explore visualizations in virtual realities (VRs). VR environments (VREs) enable new, more immersive visualization design spaces compared to traditional computer screens. Previous studies in different domains, such as medicine, psychology, and geology, report a positive effect of immersion, e.g., on learning performance or phobia treatment effectiveness. Our work presented in this paper assesses the applicability of those findings to a common task from the information visualization (InfoVis) domain. We conducted a quantitative user study to investigate the impact of immersion on cluster identification tasks in scatterplot visualizations. The main experiment was carried out with 18 participants in a within-subjects setting using four different visualizations, (1) a 2D scatterplot matrix on a screen, (2) a 3D scatterplot on a screen, (3) a 3D scatterplot miniature in a VRE and (4) a fully immersive 3D scatterplot in a VRE. The four visualization design spaces vary in their level of immersion, as shown in a supplementary study. The results of our main study indicate that task performance differs between the investigated visualization design spaces in terms of accuracy, efficiency, memorability, sense of orientation, and user preference. In particular, the 2D visualization on the screen performed worse compared to the 3D visualizations with regard to the measured variables. The study shows that an increased level of immersion can be a substantial benefit in the context of 3D data and cluster detection.
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Immersive analytics turns the very space surrounding the user into a canvas for data analysis, supporting human cognitive abilities in myriad ways. We present the results of a design study, contextual inquiry, and longitudinal evaluation involving professional economists using a Virtual Reality (VR) system for multidimensional visualization to explore actual economic data. Results from our preregistered evaluation highlight the varied use of space depending on context (exploration vs. presentation), the organization of space to support work, and the impact of immersion on navigation and orientation in the 3D analysis space.
Conference Paper
Three-dimensional scatterplots suffer from well-known perception and usability problems. In particular, overplotting and occlusion, mainly due to density and noise, prevent users from properly perceiving the data. Thanks to accurate head and hand tracking, immersive Virtual Reality (VR) setups provide new ways to interact and navigate with 3D scatterplots. VR also supports additional sensory modalities such as haptic feedback. Inspired by methods commonly used in Scientific Visualisation to visually explore volumes, we propose two techniques that leverage the immersive aspects of VR: first, a density-based haptic vibration technique (Scaptics) which provides feedback through the controller; and second, an adaptation of a cutting plane for 3D scatterplots (Highlight-Plane). We evaluated both techniques in a controlled study with two tasks involving density (finding high- and low-density areas). Overall, Scaptics was the most time-efficient and accurate technique, however, in some conditions, it was outperformed by Highlight-Plane.
Conference Paper
Room-scale Virtual Reality (VR) systems have arrived in users' homes where tracked environments are set up in limited physical spaces. As most Virtual Environments (VEs) are larger than the tracked physical space, locomotion techniques are used to navigate in VEs. Currently, in recent VR games, point & teleport is the most popular locomotion technique. However, it only allows users to select the position of the teleportation and not the orientation that the user is facing after the teleport. This results in users having to manually correct their orientation after teleporting and possibly getting entangled by the cable of the headset. In this paper, we introduce and evaluate three different point & teleport techniques that enable users to specify the target orientation while teleporting. The results show that, although the three teleportation techniques with orientation indication increase the average teleportation time, they lead to a decreased need for correcting the orientation after teleportation.