We built a spatial hybrid system that combines a personal computer (PC) and virtual reality (VR) for visual sensemaking, addressing limitations in both environments. Although VR offers immense potential for interactive data visualization (e.g., large display space and spatial navigation), it can also present challenges such as imprecise interactions and user fatigue. At the same time, a PC offers precise and familiar interactions but has limited display space and interaction modality. Therefore, we iteratively designed a spatial hybrid system (PC+VR) to complement these two environments by enabling seamless switching between PC and VR environments. To evaluate the system's effectiveness and user experience, we compared it to using a single computing environment (i.e., PC-only and VR-only). Our study results (N=18) showed that spatial PC+VR could combine the benefits of both devices to outperform user preference for VR-only without a negative impact on performance from device switching overhead. Finally, we discussed future design implications.

翻译：我们构建了一个结合个人计算机（PC）与虚拟现实（VR）的空间混合系统，以支持视觉意义建构，并解决两种环境各自的局限性。尽管VR在交互式数据可视化方面具有巨大潜力（例如，大显示空间与空间导航），但它也可能带来交互不精确和用户疲劳等挑战。与此同时，PC提供了精确且熟悉的交互方式，但其显示空间和交互模态有限。因此，我们通过迭代设计，开发了一个空间混合系统（PC+VR），通过实现PC与VR环境之间的无缝切换来互补这两种环境。为了评估系统的有效性和用户体验，我们将其与使用单一计算环境（即仅PC和仅VR）的情况进行了比较。我们的研究结果（N=18）表明，空间PC+VR能够结合两种设备的优势，在用户偏好上超越仅VR条件，且设备切换开销未对性能产生负面影响。最后，我们讨论了未来的设计启示。