Optimising Information Display and Editing Interfaces in Mixed Reality

Principal Investigator: Dr Per Ola Kristensson
Trimble Contact: Mr Peter Houghton

Project Description:

Mixed reality, delivered by interactive see-through head-mounted displays such as the Microsoft HoloLens, can be exploited to significantly extend the capabilities of workers and streamline workflows in the AEC industry.  To ensure this technology delivers productive and usable applications, the design of the interface between the human and device is critical.  The fundamental differences from conventional 2D display interactions means that there are many largely unexplored questions in terms of how information should be displayed and how interactions should be structured within a 3D mixed virtual-physical context.  This project specifically investigates the question of how to optimise the perceptibility of information displayed in a 3D immersive environment while also accommodating interactions for standard information content workflows, such as editing.  The work builds upon the 2017 Trimble Fund project in which we identified a set of key solution principles relevant to content generation in mixed reality, e.g. creation of text and sketch elements to enable in situ model mark-ups.  The research outcomes of this new project will be proof-of-concept software and empirically motivated design guidance relevant to generic information display and input tasks encountered in the AEC industry.