| dc.description.abstract | This thesis describes the design and evaluation of a new system for interacting with large 2D technical and engineering schematics in industrial Mixed Reality environments, using the Microsoft HoloLens 2. In doing so, it aims to address the limitations of existing solutions, which often rely on unintuitive interactions ported over from traditional 2D interfaces. Through a user-centered design process, involving interviews with domain experts and user testing, a prototype system was developed that prioritizes usability and the target user’s experience. The final design is based around a viewport window, where the schematic is displayed. Users can manipulate the window (move, rotate, scale) and the schematic within it (pan, zoom, rotate) through the use of Gaze+Pinch and virtual hand gestures. The system also includes a digital magnifying glass feature, allowing users to create and manipulate multiple magnifiers to zoom in on specific areas of the schematic without losing the overall context. These magnifiers can be moved, rotated, scaled, and even stacked on top of each other. They can also be frozen to capture a specific view, allowing for side-by-side comparison of multiple areas. Additionally, the system includes an annotation mode for drawing, highlighting, and writing on the schematic. The final design was evaluated against the current standard, Microsoft Edge, in a user study with 15 participants. The results showed that the prototype system outperformed the baseline with significantly lower completion times for tasks involving panning, zooming in, drawing a circle, and rotating the document, as well as for the time it took to complete the entire series of tasks. Additionally, the new system outperformed Microsoft Edge with significantly higher User Experience Questionnaire scale scores. Despite an initial learning curve, users found the new system to be more intuitive, easy to use, and easier to learn, whereas Edge was found to be slow, unresponsive, and unintuitive. Limitations include that the new system did not address multi-page schematics, and was limited to the Microsoft HoloLens 2. In addition, the evaluation did not assess all of the system’s features, compare elements in isolation, or occur in real-world industrial settings, thus limiting insights. Future work can expand on the current system’s functionality or refine it, for example by exploring additional input methods or adding support for multi-page schematics. Furthermore it could conduct a wider series of evaluations, including in real-world industrial settings, to further validate the system’s usability and effectiveness. | |
