Augmented reality painting and collage: Evaluating tangible interaction in a field study

Abstract

Tangible computing applications are rarely evaluated with field studies in real settings, which can contribute as formative studies to understand the challenges and benefits of tangible interfaces in real world practices. We present an AR environment for painting, with a physical brush, digital textures on physical models and creating dynamic stages for the model with spatial collages providing different backgrounds. We report on an evaluation of this AR environment in an architecture school, where 8 groups of students used it as a practical assignment. The evaluation demonstrated the benefits of specific features of the environment and of its tangible interfaces: immersiveness, public availability, supporting collaboration, flexibility, dynamicism and resulting rapidity in creating mixed media representations. Several challenges surfaced from the evaluation especially in connection to the distribution of the interface. The physical, spatial, and computational separation of interface components raised issues on accountability and ergonomics. We link our observations to design guidelines. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2005.