Are 4 hands better than 2?: bimanual interaction for quadmanual user interfaces

Abstract

The design of spatial user interaction for immersive virtual environments (IVEs) is an inherently difficult task. Missing haptic feedback and spatial misperception hinder an efficient direct interaction with virtual objects. Moreover, interaction performance depends on a variety of ergonomics factors, such as the user's endurance, muscular strength, as well as fitness. However, the potential benefits of direct and natural interaction offered by IVEs encourage research to create more efficient interaction methods. We suggest a novel way of 3D interaction by utilizing the fact that for many tasks, bimanual interaction shows benefits over one-handed interaction in a confined interaction space. In this paper we push this idea even further and introduce quadmanual user interfaces (QUIs) with two additional, virtual hands. These magic hands allow the user to keep their arms in a comfortable position yet still interact with multiple virtual interaction spaces. To analyze our approach we conducted a performance experiment inspired by a Fitts' Law selection task, investigating the feasibility of our approach for the natural interaction with 3D objects in virtual space.