A Generalized Model for Non-Contact Gesture Interaction with Function Application Independence

Immersive Analytics(IA), has been broadly used as an emerging technology in fields including Flow Field, Network Visualization, Volume Visualization, etc. The interaction methods are categorized into handle device and non-contact gestures, etc. In non-contact gestures, the peculiar attributes of the domain data and the subjective factors of the developers cause some variation in gesture actions across data domains. Through our investigation, we believe that there exist generic features of gesture actions across domains, including rotate and move gestures bound by interaction paradigms. Therefore, we proposed a generic model of non-contact gesture interaction to ensure data domain independence; we anticipate that the model can be efficiently adapted to multiple types of data domains in IA. We presented a gesture comfort evaluation model with micro-expressions to develop a gesture action set, introduced a gesture interaction design based on WYTIWYG (What You Touch Is What You Get) concept, defined a generic gesture interaction mechanism to prevent functional dependency, and implemented a non-contact generic gesture action paradigm for immersive environments. Subsequently, we recruited 30 participants to evaluate the three cases and recorded their micro-expressions. Finally, the micro-expressions were analyzed and a questionnaire survey was performed; the outcomes of the micro-expressions assessment were further cross-validated with the gesture evaluation model to confirm the validity of the proposed general model.