Investigating Points of View and Their User Control in Collaborative Heterogeneous Mixed Reality

Advances and increasing diversity in interactive Mixed Reality (MR) technologies foster heterogeneous collaborative environments, giving rise to multiple points of view (PoVs) on shared physical and virtual information. To address this diversity, we introduce a design space that enables precise descriptions of PoVs, their coupling and control by users during synchronous collaboration in MR. We provide an analytical exploration of this design space by classifying 28 existing remote-assistance MR systems in which a distant expert supports one or more on-site operators. Our analysis reveals that coupled PoVs are predominantly controlled by the operator. Guided by the design space, we introduce two new forms of control-expert control and dual-user mixed control-and present a first experimental evaluation of these three strategies: operator, expert, and mixed control of coupled PoVs. Results from a user study with 18 participant pairs indicate that expert control yields lower performance, usability, and preference as compared to mixed control, which offers greater flexibility for collaborative users. Moreover, mixed control achieves performance comparable to the commonly used operator control while being preferred by participants and perceived as less demanding by experts. This work advances the design of collaborative MR by introducing a PoV-centered perspective, PoV being an increasingly central feature in heterogeneous MR design.