X-Space: Interaction design of extending mixed reality space from Web2D visualization

Abstract

Mixed reality offers a larger visualization space and more intuitive means of interaction for data exploration, and many works have been dedicated to combining 2D visualizations on screen with mixe reality. However, for each combination, we need to customize the implementation of the corresponding mixed reality 3D visualization. It is a challenge to simplify this development process and enable agile building of mixed reality 3D visualizations for 2D visualizations. In addition, many existing 2D visualizations do not provide interfaces oriented to immersive analytics, so how to extend the mixed reality 3D space from existing 2D visualizations is another challenge. This work presents an agile and flexible approach to interactively transfer visualizations from 2D screens to mixed reality 3D spaces. We designed an interactive process for spatial generation of mixed-reality 3D visualizations, defined a unified data transfer framework, integrated data deconstruction techniques for 2D visualizations, implemented interfaces to immersive visualization building tool-kits, and encapsulated these techniques into a tool named X-Space. We validated that the approach is feasible and effective through 2D visualization cases including scatter plots, stacked bar charts, and adjacency matrix. Finally, we conducted expert interviews to discuss the usability and value of the method.