Usability And Acceptance Of Interactions On Augmented Reality Head Mounted Displays

Augmented reality(AR)is recently arousing more and more interest.Designing for augmented reality has different requirements than for 2D display platforms such as computers and smartphones.So far,little academic research studied usability and acceptance of interactions in AR.This research focuses on augmented reality head mounted displays and explores how to enhance the user experience by finding design guidelines for interactions in AR.A creativity game prototype was developed for this study.The concept of the game is to let users create things with virtual basic shapes which interact with both the real and the virtual worlds.An experiment with 40 graduate students was conducted to study their behaviors while they were given several tasks(web searching,mini game and creativity game prototype)to perform using an augmented reality head mounted display(Microsoft Hololens).Currently,gestures are still primitive: during the web searching part,70% of the participants declared having issues with targeting and selecting virtual objects,63% of them experienced physical fatigue due to high frequency repetitive movements.Moreover,participants instinctively performed a few gestures which were unsupported by the system.This shows gestures in AR must feel natural for the users,while taking into account physical limitations to avoid physical fatigue and difficult to perform gestures.Another finding is that it is essential to make sure the user is always fully aware of the situation and never let him have the feeling of not being in control.Lastly,a technology acceptance questionnaire showed that users appreciated the ease of use of AR and its entertaining aspect,but they were annoyed by the lower productivity compared to traditional devices.Overall,this study shows that current implementations of interactions in AR are not suited for a comfortable user experience and gives guidelines to improve them.