Towards a Linguistically Motivated Model for Selection in Virtual Reality

Pfeiffer T. Towards a Linguistically Motivated Model for Selection in Virtual Reality. In: Proceedings of the IEEE Virtual Reality 2012. IEEE; 2012: 89-90.Swiftness and robustness of natural communication is tied to the redundancy and complementarity found in our multimodal communication. Swiftness and robustness of human-computer interaction (HCI) is also a key to the success of a virtual reality (VR) environment. The interpretation of multimodal interaction signals has therefore been considered a high goal in VR research, e.g. following the visions of Bolt's put-that-there in 1980. It is our impression that research on user interfaces for VR systems has been focused primarily on finding and evaluating technical solutions and thus followed a technology-oriented approach to HCI. In this article, we argue to complement this by a human-oriented approach based on the observation of human-human interaction. The aim is to find models of human-human interaction that can be used to create user interfaces that feel natural. As the field of Linguistics is dedicated to the observation and modeling of human-human communication, it could be worthwhile to approach natural user interfaces from a linguistic perspective. We expect at least two benefits from following this approach. First, the human-oriented approach substantiates our understanding of natural human interactions. Second, it brings about a new perspective by taking the interaction capabilities of a human addressee into account, which are not often explicitly considered or compared with that of the system. As a consequence of following both approaches to create user interfaces, we expect more general models of human interaction to emerge