Progress in sensor technologies has made three-dimensional (3D) representations of the physical world available at a large scale. Leveraging such 3D representations with analytics has the potential to advance Information Systems (IS) research in several areas. However, this novel data type has rarely been incorporated. To address this shortcoming, this article first presents two showcases of 3D analytics applications together with general modeling guidelines for 3D analytics, in order to support IS researchers in implementing research designs with 3D components. Second, the article presents several promising opportunities for 3D analytics to advance behavioral and design-oriented IS research in several contextual areas, such as healthcare IS, human-computer interaction, mobile commerce, energy informatics and others. Third, we investigate the nature of the benefits resulting from the application of 3D analytics, resulting in a list of common tasks of research projects that 3D analytics can support, regardless of the contextual application area. Based on the given showcases, modeling guidelines, research opportunities and task-related benefits, we encourage IS researchers to start their journey into this largely unexplored third spatial dimension.

翻译：传感器技术的进步使得物理世界的三维（3D）表征得以大规模获取。利用分析手段挖掘此类3D表征，有望推动信息系统（IS）研究在多个领域取得进展。然而，这种新型数据类型尚未得到广泛应用。为弥补这一不足，本文首先呈现了两个3D分析应用案例及其通用建模指南，以支持IS研究人员实施包含3D组件的研究设计。其次，本文提出了若干有前景的机遇，探讨3D分析如何推动行为导向和设计导向的IS研究在医疗信息系统、人机交互、移动商务、能源信息学等多个情境领域的发展。第三，我们考察了应用3D分析所带来的收益本质，总结出一系列研究项目的通用任务——无论情境应用领域如何，3D分析均能对这些任务提供支持。基于所呈现的案例、建模指南、研究机遇及任务相关收益，我们鼓励IS研究人员开启探索这一尚待开发的第三空间维度之旅。