3D User Interfaces for Collaborative Work

Desktop environments have proven to be a powerful user interface and are used as the de facto standard human-computer interaction paradigm for over 20 years. However, there is a rising demand on 3D applications dealing with complex datasets, which exceeds the possibilities provided by traditional devices or two-dimensional display. For these domains more immersive and intuitive interfaces are required. But in order to get the users’ acceptance, technology-driven solutions that require inconvenient instrumentation, e.g., stereo glasses or tracked gloves, should be avoided. Autostereoscopic display environments equipped with tracking systems enable users to experience 3D virtual environments more natural without annoying devices, for instance via gestures. However, currently these approaches are only applied for specially designed or adapted applications without universal usability. Although these systems provide enough space to support multi-user, additional costs and inconvenient instrumentation hinder acceptance of these user interfaces. In this chapter we introduce new collaborative 3D user interface concepts for such setups where minimal instrumentation of the user is required such that the strategies can be easily integrated in everyday working environments. Therefore, we propose an interaction system and framework, which allows displaying and interacting with both monoas well as stereoscopic content in parallel. Furthermore, the setup enables multiple users to view the same data simultaneously. The challenges for combined mouse-, keyboardand gesturebased input paradigms in such an environment are pointed out and novel interaction strategies are introduced.