A user experience analysis for a mobile Mixed Reality application for cultural heritage

Mixed Reality has emerged as a valuable tool for the promotion of cultural heritage. In this context, in particular, the metaphor of virtual portals allows the virtual visit of monuments that are inaccessible or no longer exist in their original form, integrating them into the real environment. This paper presents the development of a Mixed Reality mobile application that proposes a virtual reconstruction of the church of Sant’Elia in Ruggiano, in the southern province of Lecce (Italy). By placing the virtual portal in the same place where the entrance of the church was located, the user can cross this threshold to enter inside and make a virtual journey into the past. The user experience was evaluated by administering a questionnaire to 60 users who tried the application. From the data collected, four user experience factors were identified (interest, focus of attention, presence and usability), which were compared between young and old, male and female users, and between users who had already visited the church in person and all other users. In general, the scores reveal a total independence of the other three factors from usability and a very high level of interest

A survey of usability issues in mobile map-based systems

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesHow geospatial information could be represented in map or other forms of communication to display in mobile phones to convey spatial knowledge to users more effective and efficient with less ambiguity? This triggering question stems from the usability problems available in mobile map-based systems, that made using mobile navigation services and applications for pedestrians, a tedious and complicated task which is rather confusing to be helpful. Problems such as; losing the spatial overview of the area, overload of information in small screens of mobile phones, visibility issue of off-screen entities, weaknesses in orienting users with real environment, too much engagement of users with interface which causes environment distraction and so on. There are a lot of solutions have proposed to mitigate these available issues in mobile map-based systems, but each one has its pros and cons that is not complete enough to tackle above mentioned issues alone, and most of the time a combination of them is proposing. We tried with systematic literature review (SLR) that is more reliable, replicable and valid [1], find the most frequently applied usability evaluation method in the available studies to detect the usability issues in mobile map-based systems (MMSs), then find the most frequently usability issues that detected among the reviewed literatures and how to categorize them, in what contexts they mostly happened and what solutions proposed so far to resolve them. We operated tree iterations of systematic literature review (SLR) with totally 8667 identified publications (within 6 relevant databases and a search engine with priority of 4 most prominent and relevant journals and conferences in the field of mobile HCI and location based services), that 196 one of them included in first screening1, were thoroughly read in order to check with predefined inclusion criteria and overall, 56 papers (between those 196 papers) that qualified with our well-defined and updated inclusion criteria properties read in-depth at least two times to extract the data. In the first iteration 25 papers have reviewed and relevant data with considering our research questions has extracted and reflected in the first iteration table. In the second iteration, 24 papers which had adjusted inclusion criteria parameters have included to data extraction for filling the updated table. The last iteration according to the scarcity of publications in this realm and time limitation, has operated only with 7 literatures and relevant data extracted to fill in the last updated table. Results of the SLR showed the most frequently usability evaluation method was “Questionnaire” to achieve effectiveness and efficiency of the system, and the most frequently usability issue that detected within available literatures was “losing the spatial overview” which followed by “too much zooming and panning operations by users” that stems from the same problem; small screen size of mobile devices. We categorized the issues into two main groups of technological and spatial issues, which we only here focused on the usability issues relevant to map interfaces in mobile phones (spatial issues), not the technological problems relevant to the server or the hardware perspective (sensors, connectivity, battery drainage, GPS accuracy etc.). We have noticed the most frequently usability issue has happened in the mobile phone with average screen size of 3.83 inches, 87% of the cases in the laboratory environment, with users (not experts) with average age of 26 years old that 64.2% of them had relevant knowledge (GI2 knowledge). The low amount of field-based studies highlights the lack of considering real context in available case studies that in usability evaluation of location based mobile systems is highly important. Some traditional solutions have proposed to address the most frequently occurred usability problem in mobile map-based systems such as the techniques for visualizing the off-screen objects (such as Overview&Detail, Scaled Arrows, Wedge etc.) and some techniques for enhancing the zoom and pan operations (such as vario-scale maps, semi-automatic zooming (SAZ), tilt zooming, content zooming, anchored zoom etc.) that none of them were not completely suitable enough to be applied in these systems and the most famous systems such as Google Maps still working without taking advantage of such approaches, techniques and widgets, with a lot of usability issues

User-centred design of smartphone augmented reality in urban tourism context.

Exposure to new and unfamiliar environments is a necessary part of nearly everyone’s life. Effective communication of location-based information through various locationbased service interfaces (LBSIs) became a key concern for cartographers, geographers, human-computer interaction (HCI) and professional designers alike. Much attention is directed towards Augmented Reality (AR) interfaces. Smartphone AR browsers deliver information about physical objects through spatially registered virtual annotations and can function as an interface to (geo)spatial and attribute data. Such applications have considerable potential for tourism. Recently, the number of studies discussing the optimal placement and layout of AR content increased. Results, however, do not scale well to the domain of urban tourism, because: 1) in any urban destination, many objects can be augmented with information; 2) each object can be a source of a substantial amount of information; 3) the incoming video feed is visually heterogeneous and complex; 4) the target user group is in an unfamiliar environment; 5) tourists have different information needs from urban residents. Adopting a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach, the main aim of this research project was to make a theoretical contribution to design knowledge relevant to effective support for (geo)spatial knowledge acquisition in unfamiliar urban environments. The research activities were divided in four (iterative) stages: (1) theoretical, (2) requirements analysis, (3) design and (4) evaluation. After critical analysis of existing literature on design of AR, the theoretical stage involved development of a theoretical user-centred design framework, capturing current knowledge in several relevant disciplines. In the second stage, user requirements gathering was carried out through a field quasi experiment where tourists were asked to use AR browsers in an unfamiliar for them environment. Qualitative and quantitative data were used to identify key relationships, extend the user-centred design framework and generate hypotheses about effective and efficient design. In the third stage, several design alternatives were developed and used to test the hypotheses through a laboratory-based quantitative study with 90 users. The results indicate that information acquisition through AR browsers is more effective and efficient if at least one element within the AR annotation matches the perceived visual characteristics or inferred non-visual attributes of target physical objects. Finally, in order to ensure that all major constructs and relationships are identified, qualitative evaluation of AR annotations was carried out by HCI and GIS domain-expert users in an unfamiliar urban tourism context. The results show that effective information acquisition in urban tourism context will depend on the visual design and delivered content through AR annotations for both visible and non-visible points of interest. All results were later positioned within existing theory in order to develop a final conceptual user-centred design framework that shifts the perspective towards a more thorough understanding of the overall design space for mobile AR interfaces. The dissertation has theoretical, methodological and practical implications. The main theoretical contribution of this thesis is to Information Systems Design Theory. The developed framework provides knowledge regarding the design of mobile AR. It can be used for hypotheses generation and further empirical evaluations of AR interfaces that facilitate knowledge acquisition in different types of environments and for different user groups. From a methodological point of view, the described userbased studies showcase how a UCD approach could be applied to design and evaluation of novel smartphone interfaces within the travel and tourism domain. Within industry the proposed framework could be used as a frame of reference by designers and developers who are not familiar with knowledge acquisition in urban environments and/or mobile AR interfaces