Investigating Mobile Stereoscopic 3D Touchscreen Interaction

Abstract

3D output is no longer limited to large screens in cinemas or living rooms. Nowadays more and more mobile devices are equipped with autostereoscopic 3D (S3D) touchscreens. As a consequence interaction with 3D content now also happens whilst users are on the move. In this paper we carried out a user study with 27 participants to assess how mobile interaction, i.e. whilst walking, with mobile S3D devices, differs from interaction with 2D mobile touchscreens. We investigate the difference in touch accuracy between 2D touchscreens and mobile S3D touchscreens and evaluate the minimum touch target size for mobile S3D touchscreens. The contributions of this paper are twofold: Firstly, we found the increase in minimum touch target size caused by walking was larger for a mobile S3D UI than for a 2D UI. Secondly, we present touch target sizes and aspect ratios required for reliable user interaction in each case. Additionally we examined differences in the angle at which users held the mobile S3D device compared to a 2D mobile device. We found that mobile S3D caused users to hold the device at a different angle when walking, compared to the 2D case. This first study of its kind provides valuable information to developers of the next generation of UIs and applications for mobile S3D displays and devices.