The Effect of Visual Feedback on Learnability and Usability of Design Methods

Currently 2D displays are used for the majority of design tasks, but 3D successors are slowly being introduced as a promising alternative. Understanding how the dimensionality of displayed images influences the effectiveness and efficiency of designers working with virtual reality design environments is therefore of great interest. This paper presents the results of a comparative usability study, which focuses on assessing the influence of different types of displays on learnability and usability. In our study, we carried out an experiment to compare 2D screen and 3D displays. Users were asked to design free form shapes in each of the three types of environments using a prescribed human-computer interaction process. This research shows that there are significant differences between the preferences of different user groups. Gender and level of expertise in using advanced visualization technologies had a significant influence on the usability and learnability of the design methods for each of the three display types.

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