September 22nd, 2011 by admin

Dr. Jake Seagull presented the results of a study conducted at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in the paper presentation “Comparing Remote and In-Person Collaboration in Three Virtual Tasks Using a Two-handed Interface” at the 55th annual meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.  The research examined the utility of Digital ArtForms’ Two-Handed Interface (THI) in virtual avatar-to-avatar collaboration.  Tasks consisted of 1) navigation through virtual environments, 2) acquisition of shared visual perspective, and 3) precision manipulation of virtual objects.  All tasks were carried out by each participant in face-to-face and avatar-to-avatar mentoring conditions.  The results showed that avatar-to-avatar collaboration was faster on all three tasks than face-to-face collaboration–using THI in a virtual telecollaboration setting was more effective than in-person collaboration.