Online user survey on current mobile augmented reality applications

TLDR: An extensive set of user-oriented issues to be considered in developing the mobile AR-like consumer applications currently existing on the market are highlighted, as well as in directing future user research in AR.

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.