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

Abstract

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.

Affiliations

Nurse Department of Computer Science

University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

Contributors

Meredydd Williams

Kelvin K. K. Yao

Jason R. C. Nurse

Conference

Publication date: July 2017

Publication date (Print): July 2017

Pages: 1-8

ID: 10.14236/ewic/HCI2017.1

Copyright statement: © Williams et al. Published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. Proceedings of British HCI 2017 – Digital Make-Believe. Sunderland, UK.

License:

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

Product

Product Information: 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/

Categories

Series title: Electronic Workshops in Computing