Comparing indirect and direct touch in a stereoscopic interaction task

In this paper we studied the impact that the directedness of touch interaction has on a path following task performed on a stereoscopic display. The richness of direct touch interaction comes with the potential risk of occluding parts of the display area, in order to express one's interaction intent. In scenarios where attention to detail is of critical importance, such as browsing a 3D dataset or navigating a 3D environment, important details might be missed. We designed a user study in which participants were asked to move an object within a 3D environment while avoiding a set of static distractor objects. Participants used an indirect touch interaction technique on a tablet and a direct touch technique on the screen. Results of the study show that in the indirect touch condition, participants made 30% less collisions with the distractor objects.