Usability of Cross-Device Interaction Interfaces for Augmented Reality in Physical Tasks

The shortcomings of established input methods for Augmented Reality (AR) head-mounted displays (HMDs) motivate us to investigate the use of AR HMDs with smartphones and smartwatches to improve AR interaction in physical tasks. However, it is unclear whether the cross-device interaction interfaces are efficient for AR systems on physical tasks because the physical tasks can break the interaction flow. In this work, we conducted a user study to explore this. The user study consists of three subtasks, respectively requiring one of the three representative user interface (UI) controls (buttons, sliders, or text input). We implemented them with mid-air gestures, a smartphone, and a smartwatch. We compared the three interfaces and found that the smartphone and the smartwatch interaction interfaces have greater usability, provide a better user experience, and have lower workloads than the mid-air gesture interface. However, there is no significant difference in terms of efficiency for simple interactions. We discuss the limitations of this research and directions for future work.