Résumé
The fourth industrial revolution tries to respond to the need for innovative and specific products and services in a competitive market by integrating digital technologies [Barata, 2021; Davies, 2015]. Other fields have also undergone a transformation similar to the industrial world, such as the art and culture, medical and administrative sectors. Nevertheless, the voluminous nature and intricate structure of data necessitate the adoption of novel methodologies for visualization and interaction, commonly referred to as the challenges associated with Big Data. In addition, the context in which the information occurs becomes essential in understanding it. This context can be partly or totally real. Then, one challenge is to reduce the virtual and the real boundary to provide the information at the right place and time [Barata, 2021]. To this end, Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have taken part in these transformations to combine the virtual and real worlds. It consists of overlaying a virtual world over the real world seen by the user to display additional information in relation or not to their environment. In other words, it allows immediate access to the user’s context information by placing information directly in the real world.A major challenge exposed by the immersive AR technologies is the User Interface with the switch of paradigm in terms of workspace [Billinghurst, 2021; Kim et al., 2018; Ong et al., 2008]. Where on desktop and mobile, the workspace is in 2D and limited to the size of the screen, in immersive AR, the workspace is in 3D and limited to all the environment (i.e., unlimited in terms of space, but limited by the walls and other elements that compose the environment) [Chandler et al., 2015]. Although that presents some advantages, such as reducing the cognitive load on 3D visualization, it means rethinking the place and usefulness of 2D and 3D interfaces, including new constraints related to the real environment, such as depth, occlusion, and situated and embedded visualizations [Ens et al., 2021]. Indeed, the principle of AR is to place information directly onto the real environment. So, there is a vital need to identify good and bad design practices to prevent cognitive and visual overload, as well as the generation of overwhelming environments.
Within research possibilities offered by this challenge, the research presented in this doctoral thesis will focus on visualization as a support to the user’s task through immersive AR with Head-Mounted Display (HMD). This main objective was pursued by delving into four design levels, aware of the contextual factors (e.g., users, environment, tasks) intrinsic to the application’s deployment. At the asset level (e.g., text, image, video, and 3D models), we conducted a literature review to identify text parameters, contextual constraints impacting these parameters, and, thus, guidelines to respect to ensure text readability. At the canonical tasks level (i.e., tasks indivisible into further subtasks), we conducted a second literature review to determine visualization idioms, tasks to evaluate them, and, thus, the best visualizations idioms by tasks for navigation tasks to off-screen real and virtual point of interest (POI). At the application level, we studied two use cases: on the one hand, the support of a web application for text analysis with experts in humanities using metaphors and, on the other hand, a fully immersive remote collaboration application in industrial maintenance. Last, at the cross-application level, we explored strategies to mitigate information clutter in a Pervasive Augmented Reality (PAR) scenario. Ultimately, this thesis makes fifteen contributions to research and various practice domains. In addition, this thesis is written from and extends seven publications and five student works.
| la date de réponse | 18 mars 2024 |
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| langue originale | Anglais |
| L'institution diplômante |
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| Sponsors | Pôle Mecatech |
| Superviseur | Bruno Dumas (Promoteur), Wim Vanhoof (Président), Wafa Hammedi (Jury), Anthony Cleve (Jury), Thierry Dutoit (Jury) & Marcos Serrano (Jury) |