A design concept for N-dimensional user interfaces

We describe a classification concept, that allows us to discriminate four different domains: the dimension of the internal world model, presentation effects based on different techniques, perception mechanism, and the conceptualization of the world's dimensions in the user's mental model. This classification concept is applied to visual depth cues and acoustical signals. The user's perceptual feeling of being immersed in the context of virtual interfaces can be achieved by different presentation effects based on several techniques. ⁄A major problem in designing n-D user interfaces is the fact, that designers do not have any metrics or benchmarks for applying the optimal software and hardware setting given a certain task. Different experiments for the visual information processing channel show, that, for example, depth cues for monocular perception are often sufficient versus binocular depth cues (often called stereo). Experiments show that combining different presentation and inter–action techniques in a synergetic way may give further advantages for the effectiveness of n-D user interfaces.