Applicability of Immersive Analytics in Mixed Reality: Usability Study

Hoppenstedt, Burkhard and Probst, Thomas and Reichert, Manfred and Schlee, Winfried and Kammerer, Klaus and Spiliopoulou, Myra and Schobel, Johannes and Winter, Michael and Felnhofer, Anna and Kothgassner, Oswald and Pryss, Rüdiger (2019) Applicability of Immersive Analytics in Mixed Reality: Usability Study. IEEE Access, 7 . pp. 71921-71932. ISSN 2169-3536

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Abstract

Nowadays, visual analytics is mainly performed by programming approaches and viewing the results on a desktop monitor. However, due to the capabilities of smart glasses, new user interactions and representation possibilities become possible. This refers especially to 3D visualizations in the medical field, as well as, the industry domain, as valuable depth information can be related to the complex real-world structures and related data, which is also denoted as immersive analytics. However, the applicability of immersive analytics and its drawbacks, especially in the context of mixed reality, are quite unexplored. In order to validate the feasibility of immersive analytics for the aforementioned purposes, we designed and conducted a usability study with 60 participants. More specifically, we evaluated the effects of spatial sounds, performance changes from one analytics task to another, expert status, and compared an immersive analytics approach (i.e., a mixed-reality application) with a desktop-based solution. Participants had to solve several data analytics tasks (outlier’s detection and cluster recognition) with the developed mixed-reality application. Thereby, the performance measures regarding time, errors, and movement patterns were evaluated. The separation into groups (low performer vs. high performer) was performed using a mental rotation pretest. When solving analytic tasks in mixed reality, participants changed their movement patterns in the mixed reality setting significantly, while the use of spatial sounds reduced the handling time significantly, but did not affect the movement patterns. Furthermore, the usage of mixed reality for cluster recognition is significantly faster than the desktop-based solution (i.e., a 2D approach). Moreover, the results obtained with self-developed questionnaires indicate 1) that wearing smart glasses are perceived as a potential stressor and 2) that the utilization of sounds is perceived very differently by the participants. Altogether, industry and researchers
should consider immersive analytics as a suitable alternative compared to the traditional approaches.

Item Type: Article
Subjects: DBIS Research > Publications
Divisions: Faculty of Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science > Institute of Databases and Informations Systems
Faculty of Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science > Institute of Databases and Informations Systems > DBIS Research and Teaching > DBIS Research > Publications
Depositing User: Herr Burkhard Hoppenstedt
Date Deposited: 06 Aug 2019 10:51
Last Modified: 12 Mar 2020 20:26
URI: http://dbis.eprints.uni-ulm.de/id/eprint/1806

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