ToARist : An Augmented Reality Tourism App created through User-Centred Design

Through Augmented Reality (AR), virtual graphics can transform the physical world. This offers benefits to mobile tourism, where points of interest (POIs) can be annotated on a smartphone screen. Although several of these applications exist, usability issues can discourage adoption. User-centred design (UCD) solicits frequent feedback, often contributing to usable products. While AR mock-ups have been constructed through UCD, we develop a novel and functional tourism app. We solicit requirements through a synthesis of domain analysis, tourist observation and semi-structured interviews. Through four rounds of iterative development, users test and refine the app. The final product, dubbed ToARist, is evaluated by 20 participants, who engage in a tourism task around a UK city. Users regard the system as usable, but find technical issues can disrupt AR. We finish by reflecting on our design and critiquing the challenges of a strict user-centred methodology.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Meredydd Williams

Kelvin K. K. Yao

Jason R. C. Nurse

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 1-8

Affiliations

[0001]Nurse Department of Computer Science

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Article

DOI: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.1

SO-VID: 4480172a-637e-46a7-82cf-ae1cc95d4fc1

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Conference name: Proceedings of the 31st International BCS Human Computer Interaction Conference (HCI 2017)

Conference acronym: HCI

Conference number: 31

Conference location: Sunderland, UK

Conference date: 3 - 6 July 2017

Conference sponsor: Electronic Workshops in Computing (eWiC)

Conference theme: digital make-believe, with delegates considering our expansive

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1477-9358 BCS Learning & Development

Self URI (article page): https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.1

Self URI (journal page): https://ewic.bcs.org/

reference

J. L. GabbardD. HixJ. E. Swan 1999 “Usercentred design and evaluation of virtual environments.” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 19 6 51 59
S. JulierM. LanzagortaY. BaillotL. RosenblumS. FeinerT. HöllererS. Sestito 2000 Information filtering for mobile augmented reality Proceedings of the 2000 International Symposium on Augmented Reality 3 11
J. Nielsen 1994 Usability engineering Elsevier
T. OlssonM. Salo 2011 Online user survey on current mobile augmented reality applications Proceedings of the 10th IEEe International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 75 84
T. SchinkeN. HenzeS. Boll 2010 Visualization of off-screen objects in mobile augmented reality Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. 313 316
Y. TokushoS. Feiner 2009 Prototyping an outdoor mobile augmented reality street view application Proceedings of ISMAR Workshop on Outdoor, Mixed and Augmented Reality
K. VredenburgJ. Y. MaoP. W. SmithT. Carey 2002 A survey of user-centered design practice Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 471 478
Z. Yovcheva 2015 User-centred design of smartphone augmented reality in urban tourism context PhD Thesis Bournemouth University

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[1] J. L. GabbardD. HixJ. E. Swan 1999 “Usercentred design and evaluation of virtual environments.” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications 19 6 51 59

[2] S. JulierM. LanzagortaY. BaillotL. RosenblumS. FeinerT. HöllererS. Sestito 2000 Information filtering for mobile augmented reality Proceedings of the 2000 International Symposium on Augmented Reality 3 11

[3] J. Nielsen 1994 Usability engineering Elsevier

[4] T. OlssonM. Salo 2011 Online user survey on current mobile augmented reality applications Proceedings of the 10th IEEe International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 75 84

[5] T. SchinkeN. HenzeS. Boll 2010 Visualization of off-screen objects in mobile augmented reality Proceedings of the 12th International Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services. 313 316

[6] Y. TokushoS. Feiner 2009 Prototyping an outdoor mobile augmented reality street view application Proceedings of ISMAR Workshop on Outdoor, Mixed and Augmented Reality

[7] K. VredenburgJ. Y. MaoP. W. SmithT. Carey 2002 A survey of user-centered design practice Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 471 478

[8] Z. Yovcheva 2015 User-centred design of smartphone augmented reality in urban tourism context PhD Thesis Bournemouth University

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ToARist: An Augmented Reality Tourism App created through User-Centred Design