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Radio Johnny (brought to you by the good people of Johnny Holland magazine) just published an interview Jeff Parks recorded with me shortly before the New Year, discussing augmented reality, why it’s of interest for Experience Design, and some of the areas of likely development we’ll see in AR in the near future.

You can download the podcast, check out the show notes, and subscribe to the full Radio Johnny feed here: http://johnnyholland.org/2010/03/08/radio-johnny-joe-lamantia-on-augmented-reality/

Hubris alert: I admit to having grandiose schemes to influence the evolution of an emerging medium, by consistently hectoring the world on the importance of tools for simple content creation…

UXmatters just published Playing Well with Others: Design Principles for Social Augmented Experiences, the latest installment of my column Everyware, which manages to range from Airplane II to zombies, all while continuing the recent focus on augmented reality and experience design.  ‘Playing Well With Others’ suggests AR has two paths to follow as it evolves, and proposes some design principles for creating the social augmented experiences — experiences relying on augmented social interactions as the center of gravity — that lie along one of those two paths.

Here’s an excerpt:

With the exotic, mixed realities that futurists and science-fiction writers have envisioned seemingly just around the corner, it is time to move beyond questions of technical feasibility to consider the value and impact of turning the realities of everyday social settings and experiences inside out. As with all new technologies as they move from the stage of technical probe to social probe, this AR transformation will happen case by case and context by context, involving many factors beyond the direct reach of UX design. However, as a result of the inherently social nature of augmented reality, we can be sure the value and impact of many augmented experiences depends in large part on how effectively they integrate the social dimensions of real-world settings, in real time.

The first four design principles are:

• Default to the Human
• Enhancement Not Replacement
• Build Real Bridges
• Stay Off the Critical Path

Of course, this is just a starting list, and they raise almost as many questions as they attempt to answer.

Some of those follow-up questions include: what other principles are there?

Are there ‘anti-principles’ to be aware of?

What’s the best way to make these principles part of designing augmented experiences?