Comparing indirect and direct touch in a stereoscopic interaction task

In this paper we studied the impact that the directedness of touch interaction has on a path following task performed on a stereoscopic display. The richness of direct touch interaction comes with the potential risk of occluding parts of the display area, in order to express one´s interaction intent. In scenarios where attention to detail is of critical importance, such as browsing a 3D dataset or navigating a 3D environment, important details might be missed. We designed a user study in which participants were asked to move an object within a 3D environment while avoiding a set of static distractor objects. Participants used an indirect touch interaction technique on a tablet and a direct touch technique on the screen. Results of the study show that in the indirect touch condition, participants made 30% less collisions with the distractor objects.