The S3D-UI Designer - Creating User Interface Prototypes for 3D Displays

In this paper, we present the S3D-UI Designer - a tool to create prototypes for 3D displays. Stereoscopic (S3D) displays are quickly becoming popular beyond cinemas and home entertainments. S3D displays can today already be found in mobile phones, public displays, and car dashboards. A benefit of such UIs is that they can group and structure information in a way that makes them easily perceivable for the user. At the same time, prototyping these UIs is challenging, as with traditional techniques, UI elements cannot easily be rendered and positioned in 3D space. In contrast to professional 3D authoring tools, we present a tool targeted towards non-experts to quickly and easily sketch a S3D UI and instantly render it on a 3D display. We report on the design of the tool by means of a workshop and present an evaluation study with 26 participants assessing its usabilty.