Our reading for this week will be for class discussion on Thursday, March 21st. Discussion comments are due Wednesday, March 20th by 11:59 PM.

Questioning naturalism in 3D user interfaces
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2330687
By Doug A. Bowman, Ryan P . McMahan, and Eric D. Ragan
Communications of the ACM 2012 vol. 55 (9)

Note: The above link to ACM.org requires you to be on a campus Wi-Fi / wired network. Alternately, you can log into the UW Libraries site and retrieve the article PDF through this link.

Discussion: Please answer at least two of the questions below with at least a paragraph-length comment.

Question 1

Effective naturalistic 3DUIs may require higher fidelity input and feedback hardware than “magic” (i.e. non-naturalistic) 3DUIs. For some techniques especially, such as redirected walking, this hardware becomes elaborate to the point of impracticality. Do you agree or disagree with these statements, and why?

Question 2

Naturalistic 3DUIs are often successful when they plausibly recreate an interaction technique, or “metaphor”, previously used in physical reality. Non-naturalistic 3DUIs do not always have physical or real-world equivalents. Does this difference make non-naturalistic 3DUIs a more creative possibility space, or merely make them more difficult to develop and evaluate?

Question 3

Over the years, interactions that were considered arbitrary, unnatural or indirect have become commonplace—“natural”, even. This might include writing with a pen, typing on a keyboard, or moving a computer mouse in relation to a pointer on a screen. Therefore, are “natural” interactions best defined as “common and relatable” techniques, or as a set of techniques imposed by physical limitations?

Question 4

Suppose the attempts to develop the best possible system for high-fidelity three-dimensional user interfaces reach two divergent endpoints:

1. Ultimate “naturalism”: a matter-manipulating “display” system, as imagined by Ivan Sutherland in “The Ultimate Display”, which could support any arbitrary physical interaction with perfect fidelity. Essentially, the system integrates “virtual reality” directly into the physical reality the user experiences normally.
2. Ultimate “magic”: a highly sophisticated brain-computer interface, which could support arbitrarily abstract interactions unbound by physical limitations. This system allows “virtual-reality” to entirely replace the physical reality currently experienced by the user.

Based on your valuations of naturalistic and “magic” 3DUIs, which would you prefer? Which would be more practical? More powerful?