Designing an input device to interact with multidimensional data : disco

This paper presents the design of a new device, DISCO. In addition to the traditionnal mouse capabilities, DISCO offers multiple degrees of freedom suitable for multidimensioannl data manipulation. We present various usage scenarios and explore the handling of this device through two studies. First we observe the user's hand posture on three versions of Disco with different form factors. Then we study the capabilities and limitations related to physical translations, rotations (yaw) and tilt (pitch, roll) on two versions of Disco according to three hand postures. Based on the results, we propose design guidelines to create interaction techniques that take benefit of the degrees of freedom of the device to interact with multidimensional data.