“Reality is in the air”: concept of perceived augmentation and exploration of its impact on consumer experience

Augmented reality (AR) technology is becoming increasingly used in marketing as a tool for enhancing consumer experience. Developed and defined in the fields of computer science and human-computer interaction, AR technology simulates an overlay of virtual annotations in the physical environment and interacts with it in real- time (Azuma et al., 2001). Some popular examples of AR include virtual mirrors (Ray Ban, ModiFace) and smartphone applications that simulate products such as furniture (IKEA). Despite its increasing deployment in marketing, related academic research about the significance of AR for consumer experience and its impact on consumer behavior has been scarce. This thesis approaches this gap in the literature by studying media characteristics of AR and examining their impact on consumer affective, cognitive and behavioral responses, following the approach of Theory of Interactive Media Effects by Sundar et al. (2015). Throughout a series of four articles, it aims to define salient media characteristics of AR technology and evaluate how they alter consumer experience. The 1st article examines to which extent AR shares media characteristics of other interactive technologies and how these characteristics – namely interactivity, modality, hypertextuality, connectivity, location-specificity, mobility, virtuality – influence consumer responses. Based on a literature review, a research agenda is proposed that identifies the knowledge gaps related to the impact of AR on various types of consumer responses. For example, it suggests that future research should investigate: how lower levels of hypertextuality in an AR app influence consumer satisfaction and exploratory behavior; how can AR represent a social experience, given that little connectivity is present in the current AR apps; what combinations of modality in terms of text, visuals and audio are most effective for AR; to which extent consumers perceive AR apps to be interactive and how that impacts their experience. Finally, the research agenda also underlines the importance of investigating the AR media characteristic augmentation (Preece et al., 2015), absent in previous interactive technologies. The 2nd article focuses on two salient media characteristics of AR apps – interactivity and augmentation. It shows that the presence of AR does not translate into an app being perceived as more interactive in comparison to a non-AR app in terms of control and responsiveness. On the other hand, the study offers first evidence that perceived augmentation is significantly higher for AR apps than for non-AR apps and that it represents a suitable psychological correlate (Sundar et al., 2015) for measuring the perception of AR characteristics that set it apart from other technologies. Two experimental studies demonstrate that perceived augmentation impacts the level of immersion into flow, which then mediates the impact of perceived augmentation on consumer attitude towards the app and behavioral intentions to use it again and talk about it. Based on the previous study, the 3rd article further develops the measurement items of perceived augmentation and investigates its impact on consumer experience. An in-the-wild study (Rogers, 2012) was conducted in a retail store, where we observed consumers’ interaction with an AR make-up try-on application. The findings show that such an application creates a playful experience and that shoppers would use such tool to narrow their consideration set or, in some cases, to even choose products to purchase. Furthermore, the survey study confirms that perceived augmentation significantly relates with playfulness, perceived convenience and behavioral intentions. Finally, a more complete scale for perceived augmentation is developed and validated in the 4th article. Items are refined through several qualitative studies, based on which we propose that perceived augmentation is comprised of two dimensions – virtual enhancement and virtual- physical congruency. An online study with 213 participants confirms this dimensionality and, furthermore, shows that virtual-physical congruency elicits significant impact on enjoyment and perceived informedness, which further impacts future use and purchase intention, while virtual enhancement does not yield a similar impact. The contribution of this thesis lies in defining perceived augmentation as the psychological correlate of AR’s unique media characteristic, augmentation, and in proposing and validating its measurement items. Furthermore, a series of three larger studies, all situated in different contexts (in a lab, in a retail store, online), explain how perceived augmentation yields a significant impact on consumer affective responses and behavioral intentions, and in some cases also on cognitive responses such as perceived convenience and informedness. It also highlights the importance of AR app integration in a specific context, which can prevent it from being perceived as gimmicky. The results of this work have implications for both practitioners and academics and offer numerous directions for future research

Establishing Design Principles for Augmented Reality for Older Adults

Augmented Reality (AR) is growing rapidly and becoming a more mature and robust technology, which combines virtual information with the real environment in real-time. This becomes significant in ensuring the acceptance and success of Augmented Reality systems. With the growing number of older mobile phone users, evidence shows the possible trends associated with using AR systems to support older adults in terms of transportation, home activities, rehabilitation training and entertainment. However, there is a lack of research on a theoretical framework or AR design principles that could support designers when developing suitable AR applications for specific groups (e.g. older adults). This PhD research mainly focuses on the possibility of developing and applying AR design principles to provide various possible design alternatives in order to address the relevant AR-related issues focusing on older adults. This research firstly identified the architecture of Augmented Reality to understand the definition of AR using a range of previous AR examples. Secondly, AR design principles (version 1) were identified after describing the AR features and analysing the AR design recommendations. Thirdly, this research refined the AR design principles (version 2) by conducting two half-day focus groups with AR prototypes and related scenarios for older adults. The final version of the AR design principles (version 3) for older adults was established. These are: Instantaneous Augmentation, Layer-focus Augmentation, Modality-focus Augmentation, Accurate Augmentation and Hidden Reality. Ultimately, all of these design principles were applied to AR applications and examined in practice using two focus groups. Additionally, as part of the process of AR principle development, a number of AR issues were identified and categorised in terms of User, Device, Augmentation, Real Content, Interaction and Physical World, based on the pre-established AR architecture. These AR issues and design principles may help AR designers to explore quality design alternatives, which could potentially benefit older adults

Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years

© 2013 Farshid Amirabdollahian et al., licensee Versita Sp. z o. o. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring persons’ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-Bot®3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developmentsPeer reviewe

Evaluating a tactile and a tangible multi-tablet gamified quiz system for collaborative learning in primary education

[EN] Gamification has been identified as an interesting technique to foster collaboration in educational contexts. However, there are not many approaches that tackle this in primary school learning environments. The most popular technologies in the classroom are still traditional video consoles and desktop computers, which complicate the design of collaborative activities since they are essentially mono-user. The recent popularization of handheld devices such as tablets and smartphones has made it possible to build affordable, scalable, and improvised collaborative gamifled activities by creating a multi-tablet environment. In this paper we present Quizbot, a collaborative gamifled quiz application to practice different subjects, which can be defined by educators beforehand. Two versions of the system are implemented: a tactile for tablets laid on a table, in which all the elements are digital; and a tangible in which the tablets are scattered on the floor and the components are both digital and physical objects. Both versions of Quizbot are evaluated and compared in a study with eighty primary-schooled children in terms of user experience and quality of collaboration supported. Results indicate that both versions of Quizbot are essentially equally fun and easy to use, and can effectively support collaboration, with the tangible version outperforming the other one with respect to make the children reach consensus after a discussion, split and parallelize work, and treat each other with more respect, but also presenting a poorer time management.We would like to thank Universitat Politecnica de Valencia's Summer School for their collaboration during the development of this study, as well as Colegio Internacional Ausias March for their support in the development of educational content.This work is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and funded by the European Development Regional Fund (EDRF-FEDER) with Project TIN2014-60077-R. It is also supported by fellowship ACIF/2014/214 within the VALi+d program from Conselleria d’Educació, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana), and by fellowship FPU14/00136 within the FPU program from Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture, and SportGarcía Sanjuan, F.; El Jurdi, S.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Nácher-Soler, VE. (2018). Evaluating a tactile and a tangible multi-tablet gamified quiz system for collaborative learning in primary education. Computers & Education. 123:65-84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.04.011S658412

Principles and Guidelines for Advancement of Touchscreen-Based Non-visual Access to 2D Spatial Information

Graphical materials such as graphs and maps are often inaccessible to millions of blind and visually-impaired (BVI) people, which negatively impacts their educational prospects, ability to travel, and vocational opportunities. To address this longstanding issue, a three-phase research program was conducted that builds on and extends previous work establishing touchscreen-based haptic cuing as a viable alternative for conveying digital graphics to BVI users. Although promising, this approach poses unique challenges that can only be addressed by schematizing the underlying graphical information based on perceptual and spatio-cognitive characteristics pertinent to touchscreen-based haptic access. Towards this end, this dissertation empirically identified a set of design parameters and guidelines through a logical progression of seven experiments. Phase I investigated perceptual characteristics related to touchscreen-based graphical access using vibrotactile stimuli, with results establishing three core perceptual guidelines: (1) a minimum line width of 1mm should be maintained for accurate line-detection (Exp-1), (2) a minimum interline gap of 4mm should be used for accurate discrimination of parallel vibrotactile lines (Exp-2), and (3) a minimum angular separation of 4mm should be used for accurate discrimination of oriented vibrotactile lines (Exp-3). Building on these parameters, Phase II studied the core spatio-cognitive characteristics pertinent to touchscreen-based non-visual learning of graphical information, with results leading to the specification of three design guidelines: (1) a minimum width of 4mm should be used for supporting tasks that require tracing of vibrotactile lines and judging their orientation (Exp-4), (2) a minimum width of 4mm should be maintained for accurate line tracing and learning of complex spatial path patterns (Exp-5), and (3) vibrotactile feedback should be used as a guiding cue to support the most accurate line tracing performance (Exp-6). Finally, Phase III demonstrated that schematizing line-based maps based on these design guidelines leads to development of an accurate cognitive map. Results from Experiment-7 provide theoretical evidence in support of learning from vision and touch as leading to the development of functionally equivalent amodal spatial representations in memory. Findings from all seven experiments contribute to new theories of haptic information processing that can guide the development of new touchscreen-based non-visual graphical access solutions

Synchronous communication technologies for language learning: Promise and challenges in research and pedagogy

We propose a definition of synchronous communication based on joint attention, noting that in certain mediated communication settings joint attention is a matter of perception rather than determinable fact. The most salient properties of synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) are real-time pressure to communicate and a greater degree of social presence relative to asynchronous communication. These properties underlie the benefits and challenges of SCMC for language learning, which we discuss under three headings: (1) SCMC as learning tool; (2) SCMC as target competence; and (3) SCMC as setting for learner dialogue, intracultural and intercultural. We survey research themes in SCMC and preview the contributions of the Special Issue. Finally, we identify questions for future research

CreaTable Content and Tangible Interaction in Aphasia

Multimedia digital content (combining pictures, text and music) is ubiquitous. The process of creating such content using existing tools typically requires complex, language-laden interactions which pose a challenge for users with aphasia (a language impairment following brain injury). Tangible interactions offer a potential means to address this challenge, however, there has been little work exploring their potential for this purpose. In this paper, we present CreaTable – a platform that enables us to explore tangible interaction as a means of supporting digital content creation for people with aphasia. We report details of the co-design of CreaTable and findings from a digital creativity workshop. Workshop findings indicated that CreaTable enabled people with aphasia to create something they would not otherwise have been able to. We report how users’ aphasia profiles affected their experience, describe tensions in collaborative content creation and provide insight into more accessible content creation using tangibles

Children s Acceptance of a Collaborative Problem Solving Game Based on Physical Versus Digital Learning Spaces

[EN] Collaborative problem solving (CPS) is an essential soft skill that should be fostered from a young age. Research shows that a good way of teaching such skills is through video games; however, the success and viability of this method may be affected by the technological platform used. In this work we propose a gameful approach to train CPS skills in the form of the CPSbot framework and describe a study involving 80 primary school children on user experience and acceptance of a game, Quizbot, using three different technological platforms: two purely digital (tabletop and handheld tablets) and another based on tangible interfaces and physical spaces. The results show that physical spaces proved to be more effective than the screen-based platforms in several ways, as well as being considered more fun and easier to use by the children. Finally, we propose a set of design considerations for future gameful CPS systems based on the observations made during this study.Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness and the European Regional Development Fund (project TIN2014-60077-R); Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (with fellowship FPU14/00136) and Conselleria d'Educacio, Cultura i Esport (Generalitat Valenciana, Spain) (grant ACIF/2014/214).Jurdi, S.; García Sanjuan, F.; Nácher-Soler, VE.; Jaén Martínez, FJ. (2018). Children s Acceptance of a Collaborative Problem Solving Game Based on Physical Versus Digital Learning Spaces. Interacting with Computers. 30(3):187-206. https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwy006S18720630