Flex-ER

Abstract

Extended Reality (XR) systems (which encapsulate AR, VR and MR) is an emerging field which enables the development of novel visualization and interaction techniques. To develop and to assess such techniques, researchers and designers have to face choices in terms of which development tools to adopt, and with very little information about how such tools support some of the very basic tasks for information visualization, such as selecting data items, linking and navigating. As a solution, we propose Flex-ER, a flexible web-based environment that enables users to prototype, debug and share experimental conditions and results. Flex-ER enables users to quickly switch between hardware platforms and input modalities by using a JSON specification that supports both defining interaction techniques and tasks at a low cost. We demonstrate the flexibility of the environment through three task design examples: brushing, linking and navigating. A qualitative user study suggest that Flex-ER can be helpful to prototype and explore different interaction techniques for immersive analytics.