Comfort Is in the Air: Investigating the Perceived Comfort of Rotational and Translational Mid-Air Interactions

Dominik Schön, Thomas Kosch, Martin Schmitz, Sebastian Günther, Max Mühlhäuser, Florian Müller

2026

Proceedings of the Augmented Humans International Conference 2026

TL;DR

What we did: We conducted a user study to analyze the perceived comfort and performance of rotational and translational mid-air interactions in Extended Reality.

What we found: We found that translational interactions are generally more comfortable and efficient, while rotational interactions can be viable in specific spatial or fine-granular contexts.

Takeaway: Our findings provide practical guidance for designing more ergonomic mid-air interactions, enhancing the comfort and sustainability of Augmented Human experiences.

Abstract

The degrees of freedom of our arms allow us to easily translate and rotate our hands in front of our bodies. As such, most of the common mid-air input in Extended Reality (XR) builds on these two 3D transforms. However, current research primarily focuses on specific forms and expressions of mid-air input, thereby not providing insights into the comfort and performance of the two gestural primitive building blocks: rotation and translation. To design ergonomic mid-air XR gesture input, we need a thorough understanding of the comfort and performance intrinsic to these two ground-laying building blocks. In this work, we investigate the effects of multiple influences of gestural input, such as interaction placement and complexity, on perceived comfort and performance. Our results reveal comfort preferences for translational interaction, while also highlighting opportunities for rotational-based input. We discuss how these findings can guide designers in creating more comfortable XR experiences and situate our findings within previous work.