A Comparative Study to Assess Human Machine Interaction Mechanisms for Large Scale Displays

This work presents a new comparative study for manipulating animated 3D content on a large scale display using two user interaction mechanisms. The first interaction mechanism relies on a traditional cursor-based user interface (UI) with onscreen interaction elements. The second interaction mechanism adopts a gesture-based UI without any visible interaction elements. The user’s distance from the display is significantly farther compared to a traditional desktop to correctly gauge the impact of a cursor-based UI compared to a gesture-based UI on a large scale display. Both interaction mechanisms are extensively evaluated via a user study in terms of usability, user experience (UX), and ergonomics. Through both quantitative and the qualitative evaluation, the results show that a gesture-based interface is a preferred method to manipulate animated 3D content compared to a cursor-based UI on a large scale display in terms of usability and UX. The results also demonstrate that using a gesture-based UI does not rank higher in terms of physical and cognitive ergonomics compared to a cursor-based UI.