Online user survey on current mobile augmented reality applications

Abstract

Augmented reality (AR) as an emerging technology in the mobile computing domain is becoming mature enough to engender publicly available applications for end users. Various commercial applications have recently been emerging in the mobile consumer domain at an increasing pace -Layar, Junaio, Google Goggles, and Wikitude are perhaps the most prominent ones. However, the research community lacks an understanding of how well such timely applications have been accepted, what kind of user experiences they have evoked, and what the users perceive as the weaknesses of the various applications overall. During the spring of 2011 we conducted an online survey to study the overall acceptance and user experience of the mobile AR-like consumer applications currently existing on the market. This paper reports the first analyses of the qualitative and quantitative survey data of 90 respondents. We highlight an extensive set of user-oriented issues to be considered in developing the applications further, as well as in directing future user research in AR. The results indicate that the experiences have been inconsistent: generally positive evaluations are overshadowed by mentions of applications' pragmatic uselessness in everyday life and technical unreliability, as well as excessive or limited and irrelevant content.

User-perspective augmented reality magic lens from gradients

“…With the proliferation of smartphones and tablets AR has reached the mainstream consumer market; this has made hand-held videosee-through the most common type of AR and it is what is often assumed by the term "magic lens" when used in the context of AR [Mohring et al 2004;Olsson and Salo 2011]. Since the display of the augmented environment from the perspective of the device's camera introduces a potentially unwanted shift of perspective, there is renewed interest in solutions for seamless user-perspective representation of the augmented world on such self-contained mobile AR platforms.…”

A hand-held AR magic lens with user-perspective rendering

“…or based on image recognition (Google Goggles, StikyBits, ShopSavvy). A recent survey by Olsson et al [22] measured the overall acceptance and user experience with these types of applications. Their results indicated an inconsistent user experience and raised concerns regarding practical usefulness and technical unreliability.…”

Augmented Reality in Tourism - Research and Applications Overview

“…Some research on augmented reality in tourism context is focused on usability aspects and cognitive issues [34], but there is also research targeted towards expected user experiences from using augmented reality technology [35] and actual experiences [36]. Olsson et al [37] documented captivation, motivation, engagement and novelty as some of the more relevant characteristics of expected user experiences with using augmented reality technologies.…”