Navigating the space: evaluating a 3D-input device in placement and docking tasks

We present a study investigating the performance in a 3D object manipulation task with a mouse and a dedicated input device (SpaceNavigator). Previous research delivered ambiguous results about the performance in different 3D tasks. Therefore we used placement (only translation) as well as docking (translation and rotation) tasks. Twelve participants experienced with 3D software took part in the study. They had to translate and rotate 30 cubes with the mouse and the SpaceNavigator (altogether 60 tasks) to place them on a chessboard in Autodesk Maya. The results show an outperformance of the mouse over the SpaceNavigator in the placement tasks but not in the docking tasks, which require a higher extent of object manipulation. Although the SpaceNavigator did not outperform the mouse, considering the number of tasks with the SpaceNavigator and further results of the study (like the learning effect and subjective feedback), the usage of a higher degree-of-freedom device for tasks with multiple simultaneous object manipulations seems reasonable.

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