Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging technology in mobile app design during recent years. However, usability challenges in these apps are prominent. There are currently no established guidelines for designing and evaluating interactions in AR as there are in traditional user interfaces. In this work, we aimed to examine the usability of current mobile AR applications and interpreting classic usability heuristics in the context of mobile AR. Particularly, we focused on AR home design apps because of their popularity and ability to incorporate important mobile AR interaction schemas. Our findings indicated that it is important for the designers to consider the unfamiliarity of AR technology to the vast users and to take technological limitations into consideration when designing mobile AR apps. Our work serves as a first step for establishing more general heuristics and guidelines for mobile AR.
Many instructors in computing and HCI disciplines use hands-on activities for teaching and training new skills. Beyond simply teaching hands-on skills like sketching and programming, instructors also use these activities so students can acquire tacit skills. Yet, current video-conferencing technologies may not effectively support hands-on activities in online teaching contexts. To develop an understanding of the inadequacies of current video-conferencing technologies for hands-on activities, we conducted 15 interviews with university-level instructors who had quickly pivoted their use of hands-on activities to an online context during the early part of the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on our analysis, we uncovered four pedagogical goals that instructors have when using hands-on activities online and how instructors were unable to adequately address them due to the technological limitations of current video-conferencing tools. Our work provides empirical data about the challenges that many instructors experienced, and in so doing, the pedagogical goals we identify provide new requirements for video-conferencing systems to better support hands-on activities.
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