Assessing the usability of tile-based interfaces to visually navigate 3-D parameter domains

Navigating 3-D parameter domains, such as color and orientation of an object, is a common task performed in most computer graphics applications. Although 1-D sliders are the most common interface for browsing such domains, they provide a tedious and difficult user experience that hampers finding desirable visual solutions. We present the Rhomb-i slider, a novel and visually enriching tile-based interface to navigate arbitrary 3-D parameter domains. Contrary to 1-D sliders, the Rhomb-i slider supports a sketch-based interface that gives simultaneous access to up to two parameters. We conducted a usability study to ascertain whether the proposed Rhomb-i slider is a more natural interface compared to 1-D sliders and other commonly used widgets for different 3-D parameter domains: HSV color space, super-shape curves, and rotation of a 3-D object. On the one hand, qualitative feedback and performance measures reveal that Rhomb-i sliders have similar results when compared to conventional HSV color interfaces, and are the preferred interface to efficiently explore the super-shapes parameter domain. On the other hand, Rhomb-i revealed to be a less efficient and effective interface to rotate a 3D object, thus paving the way to new design explorations regarding this tile-based interface.