The Development and Validation of an Augmented and Mixed Reality Usability Heuristic Checklist

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) are new emerging technologies that are becoming increasingly popular. Because these technologies are so new, there is a lack of standards and consistency in application and hardware design. This can make it difficult to learn and frustrating for users. One way to standardized design and enhance the usability of a product is through the use of heuristic evaluations. General heuristics, such as Nielsen’s 10 or Schneiderman’s 8 usability heuristics have been used to evaluate these technologies. These heuristics are a useful starting point because they bring attention to many crucial aspects of the usability of a product. However, additional aspects that could alter the users’ experience may not be assessed due to the uniqueness of AR and MR. There are very few validated AR and MR heuristics in the literature for practitioners to use. The purpose of this study was to create and validate a heuristic checklist that can be used to assess and inform design changes that influence the user experience of an AR or MR application and/or device. We followed an established and comprehensive 8-stage methodology developed by Quiñones, Rusu, & Rusu to create and validate our AR and MR usability heuristic checklist [4]. This included a search and summary of the current literature, formally defining heuristics based on this literature search, and validating through heuristic evaluations, expert reviews, and user testing. Our final revised heuristic checklist included 11 heuristics and 94 checklist items that encompasses usability aspects for AR and MR technologies.