User Expectations and Experiences of Mobile Augmented Reality Services

Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) as an emerging field of technology has the potential to engender services that demonstrate novel aspects like enriching the reality with digital information, location-based interaction, and tangible user interfaces. The early visions of MAR anticipated it to revolutionize the way of accessing and interacting with information in mobile contexts. However, one hindrance in this path is the lack of research understanding of the subjective user experience (UX) resulting from, e.g., the novel interaction metaphors and the mixing of realities that MAR embodies. What is more, little is known about users’ expectations of the futuristic concept of MAR and the experiences it could evoke. Because of the increasing importance of UX as a quality attribute in products and services, there is a need to understand the characteristics and expectations of UX in specific emerging fields like MAR. The goal of this thesis research is twofold: (1) to understand potential users’ expectations with regard to UX of future MAR services and (2) to understand the actual UX of the recent first-generation MAR applications like Junaio and Layar. By understanding the scope of expectations and experience that can take place in the field of MAR, it is possible to help the design and engineering of AR-based services to consider also the experiential aspirations of potential end users. This compound thesis belongs to the research field of Human-Computer Interaction. It contains four studies, in which altogether 401 persons participated in either interviews or online surveys. The empirical findings on expected and actual experiences are reported in six publications. The theoretical contribution is mostly conceptual, culminating to a framework that describes the facets of UX and categories of meaningful experiences in MAR. Based on the empirical findings and the framework, the practical contribution is concretized in the form of (1) design implications and (2) subjective evaluation measures to help designing future MAR services with an experience-oriented approach. According to the results, potential users (early adopters) expected MAR services to create a great extent of pleasurable experiences, such as empowerment, surprise, awareness, liveliness, playfulness, tangibility, collectivity, inspiration and creativity. Furthermore, the expectations were attributed to a variety of service components, also relating to other ubiquitous computing aspects (e.g., the augmentation as an output, proactive functionalities, and embedding of digital content to the reality). This implies that emerging technological concepts like MAR are perceived in very diverse ways and that people’s expectations of them consist largely of general needs and desires. The existing first-generation MAR applications, however, seem generally not to fulfill the expectations, showing a much narrower extent of actualized experience characteristics. This experiential gap, as well as the narrower extent of functionalities in current applications, contains much potential with regard to pursuing a rich and pleasurable UX in future design of MAR services. The empirical results, conceptualizations and practical implications can be utilized and built on in academic research as well as in development of MAR. The novelty and complexity of both MAR and UX as concepts elicit an extensive breadth of aspects to be studied in detail in future research and development – regarding both MAR as a field of technology and UX as a field of theory

Interactions and Applications for See- Through interfaces: Industrial application examples

Abstract Could See-through technologies be useful and have benefits in industrial applications? Possible scenarios could range through a full product lifecycle; from production line operators, through machine operators to service engineers. There are also challenges involved in using new technology in critical applications; such as user attention, data availability and efficient ways of interaction for the specific task at hand. This workshop submission aims to present a number of usage scenarios together with a discussion on related risk and technical aspects

Are AR shopping services valued the same way throughout Europe? A four-country Q-investigation

Augmented reality creates new affordances for shopping-related interactions because it allows consumers to experience a product within the context of their choice and in a customized way before making a purchasing decision. There is a need to evaluate the potential of this technology and its features in order to integrate it strategically into e- and m-commerce activities. Given that technologies are now developing on a global scale, research should take a multiple country approach. The present study provides qualitative cross-country insights into four European nations and provides guidelines on how to conduct Q-investigations within comparative settings. The results suggest that both divergence and convergence phenomena occur calling for a differentiated approach to target users and to the development of applications

Alternative realities : from augmented reality to mobile mixed reality

This thesis provides an overview of (mobile) augmented and mixed reality by clarifying the different concepts of reality, briefly covering the technology behind mobile augmented and mixed reality systems, conducting a concise survey of existing and emerging mobile augmented and mixed reality applications and devices. Based on the previous analysis and the survey, this work will next attempt to assess what mobile augmented and mixed reality could make possible, and what related applications and environments could offer to users, if tapped into their full potential. Additionally, this work briefly discusses what might be the cause for mobile augmented reality not yet being widely adopted to everyday use, even though many such applications already exist for the smartphone platform, and smartglass systems slowly becoming increasingly common. Other related topics and issues that are briefly covered include information security and privacy issues related to mobile augmented and mixed reality systems, the link between mobile mixed reality and ubiquitous computing, previously conducted user studies, as well as user needs and user experience issues. The overall purpose of this thesis is to demonstrate what is already possible to implement on the mobile platform (including both hand-held devices and head-mounted configurations) by using augmented and mixed reality interfaces, and to consider how mobile mixed reality systems could be improved, based on existing products, studies and lessons learned from the survey conducted in this thesis

Pokemon GO in Melbourne CBD: A case study of the cyber-physical symbiotic social networks

[EN] The recent popular game, Pokemon GO, created two symbiotic social networks by location-based mobile augmented reality (LMAR) technique. One is in the physical world among players, and another one is in the cyber world among players' avatars. To date, there is no study that has explored the formation of each social network and their symbiosis. In this paper, we carried out a data-driven research on the Pokemon GO game to solve this problem. We accordingly organised the collection of two real datasets. For the first dataset, we designed a questionnaire to collect players' individual behaviours in Pokemon GO, and used maps of Melbourne (Australia) to track and record their usual playing areas. Based on the data that we collected, we modelled the formation of the symbiotic social networks in both physical world (i.e. for players) and cyber world (i.e. for avatars) as well as interactions between players and Pokemon GO elements (i.e. 'bridges' of the two worlds). By investigating the mechanism of network formation, we revealed the relatively weak correlation between the formation processes of the two networks. We further incorporated the real-world pedestrian dataset collected by sensors across Melbourne CBD into the study of their symbiosis. Based on the second dataset, we examined the changes of people's social behaviours in terms of most visited places. The results suggested that the existence of the cyber social network has reciprocally changed the structure of the symbiotic physical social network. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This research is partially supported by the Australian Research Council projects DP150103732, DP140103649, and LP140100816. The authors extend their appreciation to the International Scientific Partnership Program (ISPP) at King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for funding this work through the project No. ISPP#0069.Wang, D.; Wu, T.; Wen, S.; Liu, D.; Xiang, Y.; Zhou, W.; Hassan Mohamed, H.... (2018). Pokemon GO in Melbourne CBD: A case study of the cyber-physical symbiotic social networks. Journal of Computational Science. 26:456-467. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocs.2017.06.009S4564672

Mixed Reality Images: Trilogy of Synthetic Realities III

The interplay of physical reality and digital media technologies is getting enhanced by new interfaces. The age of hyper-reality turns into the age of hyper-aesthetics and immersive image technologies - like mixed reality - enable a completely novel form of interaction and user relation with the virtual image structures, the different screen technologies, and embedded physical artefacts for interaction. "Mixed Reality Images" contributes to the wide range of the hyper-aesthetic image discourse to connect the concept of mixed reality images with the approaches in modern media theory, philosophy, perceptual theory, aesthetics, computer graphics and art theory as well as the complex range of image science. This volume monitors and discusses the relation of images and technological evolution in the context of mixed reality within the perspective of an autonomous image science

THEORY INTO PRACTICE: "DOMAIN-CENTRIC HANDHELD AUGMENTED REALITY GAME DESIGN" FOR DESIGNERS

Master'sMASTER OF ARTS (INDUSTRIAL DESIGN