Technologies are developing in an incredible fast pace. Starting from the first giant ENIAC machine over 80 years ago, to multi-touch displays in 2007 and now extended reality (VR/AR/MR) with the goal to create a more immersive and more natural ways of experience. Users interact with digital content in either a virtual, augmented or mixed reality. The trend is going towards placing virtual objects into the real world such as Instagram filters and PokemonGo do. Additional equipment, e.g. controllers or markerbased-gloves, is replaced by hand gestures since humans use their hands on a daily basis to communicate and interact. The role of hand representation in Augmented Reality (AR) is becoming more and more important in interaction. However, designers and developers are still confronted with the question of how to interact with digital content and produce a proper experience with a high level of realism. This thesis investigates the impact and quality of hand representation and three-dimensional (3D) gesture based interaction in Extended Reality (XR) environments, in particular in AR. For this purpose, an AR application, which offers interaction through gesture input was designed and implemented to visualize digital information in form of a mind map. The focus of the application lies within the interaction with minimal mind map items using diverse hand representations.in order to measure the quality, a user study was conducted with seven participants in total, investigating the acceptance, work load and explorative behavior. Additional feedback was provided from three experts in form of discussions. Finally findings are discussed and recommendations are made for future work.
Abstract from master thesis by Kristine Schwabauer.
