Effects of gender, application, experience and constraints on interaction performance using autostereoscopic displays

We describe a set of experiments that compare 2D CRT, shutter glasses and autostereoscopic displays; measure user preference for different tasks in different displays; measure the effect of previous user experience in the interaction performance for new tasks; and measure the effect of constraining the user's hand motion and hand-eye coordination. In this set of tests, we used interactive object selection and manipulation tasks using standard scalable configurations of 3D block objects. We also used a 3D depth matching test in which subjects are instructed to align two objects located next to each other on the display to the same depth plane. New subjects tested with hands out of field of view constraint performed more efficiently with glasses than with autostereoscopic displays, meaning they were able to match the objects with less movement. This constraint affected females more negatively than males. From the results of the depth test, we note that previous subjects on average performed better than the new subjects. Previous subjects had more correct results than the new subjects, and they finished the test faster than the new subjects. The depth test showed that glasses are preferred to autostereo displays in a task that involves only stereoscopic depth.