This paper describes the design process and user evaluation of an outdoor educational mobile augmented reality application. The main goal was to enhance and augment the experience of a visit to a culturally significant place, the childhood home of the children's book author Astrid Lindgren. Visiting sites of historical significance is not limited to the cultural experience itself, but can be seen as an opportunity for learning and exploring a place as it is now and as it has been in past times. By investigating the two design dimensions place and time, our application was conceived as a treasure hunt, where users activate content by moving between places and pointing the mobile device in different directions or at different markers. The application was field tested with mixed groups of children and adults. The evaluation indicates that the prototype did encourage both learning and exploring, which also was the design objective.

This paper presents a study where Augmented Reality (AR) technology has been used as a tool for supporting collaboration between the rescue services, the police and military personnel in a crisis management scenario. There are few studies on how AR systems should be designed to improve cooperation between actors from different organizations while at the same time supporting individual needs. In the present study, an AR system was utilized for supporting joint planning tasks by providing organization specific views of a shared map. The study involved a simulated emergency event conducted in close to real settings with representatives from the organizations for which the system is developed. As a baseline, a series of trials without the AR system was carried out. Results show that the users were positive toward the AR system and would like to use it in real work. They also experience some performance benefits of using the AR system compared to their traditional tools. Finally, the problem of designing for collaborative work as well as the benefits of using an iterative design processes is discussed.

Augmented Reality (AR) technology has, despite many applications in the research domain, not made it to a widespread end user market. The one exception is AR applications for mobile phones. One of the main reasons for this development is technological constraints of the non-mobile phone based systems - the devices used are still neither mobile nor lightweight enough or simply not usable enough. This thesis addresses the latter issue by taking a holistic approach to the development and evaluation of AR applications for both single user and multiple user tasks. The main hypothesis is that in order for substantial wide spread use of AR technology, the applications must be developed with the aim to solve real world problems with the end user and goal in focus.

Augmented Reality systems are information systems that merge real and virtual information with the purpose of aiding users in different tasks. An AR system is a general system much like a computer is general; it has potential as a tool for many different purposes in many different situations. The studies in this thesis describe user studies of two different types of AR applications targeting different user groups and different application areas. The first application, described and evaluated, is aimed at giving users instructions for use and assembly of different medical devices. The second application is a study where AR technology has been used as a tool for supporting collaboration between the rescue services, the police and military personnel in a crisis management scenario.

Both applications were iteratively developed with end user representatives involved throughout the process and the results illustrate that users both in the context of medical care, and the emergency management domain, are positive towards AR systems as a technology and as a tool in their work related tasks. The main contributions of the thesis are not only the end results of the user studies, but also the methodology used in the studies of this relatively new type of technology. The studies have shown that involving real end users both in the design of the application and in the user task is important for the user experience of the system. Allowing for an iterative design process is also a key point. Although AR technology development is often driven by technological advances rather than user demands, there is room for a more user centered approach, for single user applications as well as for more dynamic and complex multiple user applications.

Eye contact is believed to be an important factor in normal human communication and as a result of this a head mounted display (HMD) is often seen as something intrusive and limiting. This can be especially problematic when AR is used in a collaborative setting. The study presented in this paper aims to investigate the effects an HMD-based AR system can have on eye contact behaviour between participants in a collaborative task and thus, in extension, the effects of the HMD on collaboration itself. The focus of the study is on task-oriented collaboration between professionals. The participants worked through three different scenarios alternating between HMDs and regular paper maps with the purpose of managing the crisis response to a simulated major forest fire. Correlations between eye contact between participants and questionnaire items concerning team- and taskwork were analysed, indicating that, for the paper map condition, a high amount of eye contact is associated with low confidence and trust in the artefacts used (i.e. paper map and symbols). The amount of eye-contact in both conditions was very low. It was significantly higher for conditions without HMDs. However, the confidence and trust in the artefacts was generally rated significantly higher with HMDs than without. In conclusion, the decrease in eye contact with HMDs does not seem to have a direct effect on the collaboration in a professional, task-oriented context. This is contrary to popular assumptions and the results are relevant for future design choices for AR systems using HMDs.

This paper presents results from a study on using an AR application to support collaborative command and control activities requiring the collaboration of three different civil service organisations. The technology is used to create a common ground between the organisations and allows the users to interact, plan resources and react to the ongoing events on a digital map. The AR application was developed and evaluated in a study where a forest fire scenario was simulated. Participants from the involved organisations acted as command and control teams in the simulated scenario and both quantitative and qualitative results were obtained. The results show that AR can become a useful tool in these situations in the future.

This paper presents a study where Augmented Reality (AR) technology has been used as a tool for supporting collaboration between the rescue services, the police and military personnel in a crisis management scenario. There are few studies on how AR systems should be designed to improve cooperation between actors from different organizations while at the same time support individual needs. In the present study an AR system was utilized for supporting joint planning tasks by providing organisation-specific views of a shared working. The study involved a simulated emergency event conducted in close to real settings with representatives from the organisations for which the system is developed. As a baseline, a series of trials without the AR system was carried out. Results show that the users were positive towards the AR system, and would like to use it in real work. They also experience some performance benefits of using the AR system compared to their traditional tools. Finally, the problem of designing for collaborative work as well as the benefits of using an iterative design processes is discussed.

The main focus of this thesis is the study of user centered issues in Mixed and Augmented Reality (AR) systems. Mixed Reality (MR) research is in general a highly technically oriented field with few examples of user centered studies. The few studies focusing on user issues found in the field are all based on traditional Human Computer Interaction (HCI) methodologies. Usability methods used in MR/AR research are mainly based on usability methods used for graphical user interfaces, sometimes in combination with usability for Virtual Reality (VR) applications. MR/AR systems and applications differ from standard desktop applications in many ways, but specifically in one crucial respect; it is intended to be used as a mediator or amplifier of human action, often in physical interaction with the surroundings. The differences between MR/AR systems and desktop computer display based systems create a need for a different approach to both development and evaluations of these systems. To understand the potential of MR/AR systems in real world tasks the technology must be tested in real world scenarios. This thesis describes a theoretical basis for approaching the issue of usability evaluations in MR/AR applications. It also includes results from two user studies conducted in a hospital setting where professionals tested an MR/AR system prototype.

The differences between Augmented Reality (AR) systems and computer display based systems create a need for a different approach to the design and development of AR systems. To understand the potential of AR systems in real world tasks the technology must be tested in real world scenarios. This case study includes two qualitative user studies where AR was used for giving instructions to users in a hospital. The data show that the users in the context of medical care are positive towards AR systems as a technology and as a tool for instructions in terms of usefulness and social acceptance. The results indicate that AR technology, should it be introduced as technical support in this context, may become an accepted, and appreciated, part of every day work.

Augmented Reality has potential to support collaboration in complex situations, such as command and control. Unfortunately there are few studies on how such systems should be designed to facilitate cooperation between actors from different organisations and at the same time support individual actors needs. This poster presents an iterative design process of an Augmented Reality system for a collaborative task.