Navigating the space: evaluating a 3D-input device in placement and docking tasks

The manipulation of three dimensional (3D) objects is a task frequently needed in different computer applications, especially in the context of computeraided design (CAD). In a typical desktop computing environment the user however has no direct access to the 3D-object, and it has to be controlled and manipulated using interaction mechanisms with a limited number of degrees of freedom (DoFs). Much previous research was committed to find good ways of overcoming this problem. A considerable part of this research concentrated on designing new 3D input devices, to enable the user to intuitively control three to six DoFs simultaneously. Despite these efforts the mouse remains the most widely used input device for 3D tasks, and frequently outperforms dedicated 3D input devices in empirical evaluation studies (e.g. Bérard et al., 2009). Besides these research efforts also first commercial products became available, e.g. SpaceNavigator. It however remains questionable whether these devices can actually deliver the advertised gains in performance in 3D interaction. The present study aims to evaluate the performance of an existing commercial 3D-