Interaction With Partially Transparent Hands And Objects

Visual concealment of important objects and information by hands or tools can make many tasks more difficult. To alleviate this problem, hands and tools can be made partially transparent, allowing users to see their tools and work area simultaneously. This paper describes our experience with a system that can control the level of transparency of hands, tools and objects. We describe how users performed with uniform transparency across objects and with selective transparency where important details of objects are made less transparent. We identify several perceptual issues with this interface and propose possible solutions.