The Use of Hand-held Devices for Search Tasks in Virtual Environments

Interaction through handheld devices is increasingly being used in virtual environments (VEs) for science, engineering, and entertainment applications. Some of the uniqueness of these nontraditional multiplatform user interfaces (MPUI) lies in the division of information between multiple displays and the remote control of information (e.g., using on computer to control a remote display). We performed an exploratory comparative study to understand what an appropriate division is and how people interact in such setting within the context of information-rich virtual environment for biomedical visualization applications. Three conditions studied were a Tablet PC (Tablet) with a traditional desktop, a Tablet with a large screen display combination, and a desktop VE environment. The results reported here are: physical large screen had a noticeable impact on presence; the form factor of Tablet worked both in favor and against the user in different conditions; and context switching was a problem but might be compensated using the mobility of the Tablet.