Comparative Glyph-Field Trajectory Analyses with an AR+Tablet Hybrid User Interface for Geospatial Analysis Tasks

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) supports large virtual display areas without the need for physical screens-affording more mobility to the user and displaying map-based data. Current head-worn AR devices have limited processing and rendering capabilities. Their hand-free input is imprecise. Hybrid interfaces, such as AR+tablet, can mitigate these limitations: the tablet can provide additional display fidelity in a region of interest and act as a precise input device. Used together, AR and a tablet support tasks that simultaneously require mobility and large area displays. However, more work is needed on such a system to understand the influence of glyph visualization techniques on glyph field scanning behaviours. Two glyph-based representations named Polyline and Mondrian were compared. Polyline is a shape-based technique known to be good for finding trends in desktop contexts. Mondrian is a colour-based technique. In theory, it is good for pre-attentive cursory exploration. Participants performed seminaturalistic tasks based on geospatial linear regression. Polyline induced more scrolling on the tablet because participants wanted to examine glyphs more closely. Mondrian induced more gaze movement across the AR display region, but tasks could also affect gaze. We then discuss focus+context, and colourmap design.