Using Audio Augmented Reality to Support Decision Making

Audio augmented reality (AR) is becoming increasingly popular as a medium for communicating additional layers of information about a user’s environment. This extended abstract reports the preliminary results of a study examining the impact of an audio AR enabled mobile decision aid, FoodGlance, on users’ decision quality as well as their overall experience of the decision-making process. Research shows that people often find nutrition facts labels confusing and difficult to use [1]. FoodGlance was designed to make it easier for people to choose healthy products based on their dietary needs and preferences. FoodGlance uses OCR technology to extract textual information from nutrition fact labels and then translates it into simple feedback [2]. In this study, the feedback was provided in three different ways: audio AR, visual, and the combination of the two. Audio AR was provided via Bose glasses. Visual feedback, consistent with our previous study, was displayed as a pop-up on the smartphone showing thumbs up (good amount) or thumps down (bad amount) for sugar, fat, and protein separately [2]. For this study we used the FDA’s 5-20 percent daily value rule to design feedback. The feedback engine in FoodGlance, however, is not limited to this rule and can be modified by users

Impact of Anxiety on Information Processing Among Young Adults: An Exploratory Eye-tracking Study

Anxiety, one of the most common mental illnesses among American adults, is often assessed via self-reported measures. While self-reported measures provide an efficient step in capturing health symptoms from patients’ point of view, by their mere nature self-reported measures provide only a narrow interpretation of health symptoms. Capturing eye movements unobtrusively during self-reports, when patients summarize their experience of anxiety by choosing a single option among a set of alternatives, can provide invaluable insight about patients’ information processing and decision behavior. Because anxiety impacts how we attended to information that we use to select options, the objective moment-to-moment eye-movement data can substantially enrich the information that is typically provided by patients as single scores representing their anxiety levels. Supporting this point of view, our results indicate that eye movements may serve as valuable objective information complementing the subjective self-reported anxiety measures to enable more effective assessment and treatment of anxiety