Basic Requirements to Designing Collaborative Augmented Reality: Status Quo and First Insights to a User-Centered Didactic Concept

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) has become a ubiquitous technology in daily working, learning, and spare life. However, AR still lacks research in terms of productivity and design for being effective on users and the situations it is used in. Particularly in collaborative and also educational settings, the technology has to be adapted in order to be effective for all users concerned. Moreover, the design of the scenario the technology is realised in has to be adapted to the needs and requirements of a productive digital learning environment. In this context, the question still needs investigation how these applications affected e.g. the learning process. As a basis, this paper examines the state of the art of the design process in terms of developing collaborative AR applications and their respective use cases. Besides technical requirements, this paper also focuses on user-centered criteria in terms of usability and effectiveness for collaborative processes in order to lay the groundwork for designing a didactical concept. In order to develop a list of requirements of design criteria for both the didactic scenario and the collaborative AR application, a literature-based requirements analysis has been conducted. Thus, a set of criteria for designing collaborative AR has been deduced. This set is categorised in order to give a detailed description for developing AR applications for collaborative settings on different levels and constraints, e.g. regarding didactic methods, implementation process, usability and user experience design, and necessary resources (for both developing and using collaborative AR). Also, the catalogue presented in this paper will not be finalised but iteratively adjusted to the findings of the empirical study.