In the first part of our augmented reality (AR) anti-patterns series, we took a closer look at why porting computer (both desktop and laptop) applications and operating systems into augmented reality headsets can be more difficult than you think. In this second part, we look at how widely used practices in AR display visualizations fall a bit short of providing a seamless user interface (UI) experience.
AR apps on smartphones have been around since 2008 (well before Pokémon GO popularized AR through today’s phones) thanks to Wikitude creating the first AR travel app for Android smartphones. Since then, companies like Yelp and Metro Paris Subway have created AR apps designed to help users explore and navigate their surroundings. Other companies like Crayola have created AR coloring apps to help foster children’s creativity. However, one thing that these apps have in common is that their visual display of information tends to be constrained by the size of the phone screen, so digital information overlaid on the real, physical world tends to end up looking something similar to this:
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Image above: The Yelp Monocle app, the first AR iPhone app, in action (Parr)
You might be thinking, “Eh, that’s not too bad, especially since you can only show so much on the screen.” But, if you were to think about it from a user experience perspective, the amount of text and image boxes cluttering the screen is overwhelming and distracts you from being able to focus on what you’re looking for. And just because most apps portray information overlays in this manner does not mean it’s “best practice”.
Keep the Visual Display Clean and Unobtrusive
AR operates on the underlying premise that computing and interaction take place in the real, physical world, so you need to react and relate to the digital information overlaid on your real-world surroundings. But, when there are too many digital objects plastered into our fields of view that follow us around, as seen in the Yelp Monocle app screenshot or in Keichi Matsuda’s more extreme example below, users can’t help but feel bombarded or oversaturated.
Image below: Scene from Keichi Matsuda’s critically-acclaimed short film “Hyper-Reality” (Matsuda)
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Source: Metavision Blog