April 2nd, 2010 — 12:00am
I’ve posted my slides for the Where 2.0 panel “The Next Wave of AR: Social Augmented Experiences” organized by Tish Shute. After a review of the current state of augmented reality experiences in terms of the social interactions supported (using the metric of ‘social maturity’), it shares 9 principles for creating social AR experiences that people will enjoy and value.
Special points to those who spot the embedded April Fool’s joke…
Comment » | Augmented Reality, Everyware, User Experience (UX)
March 7th, 2010 — 12:00am
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?
Comment » | Augmented Reality, Everyware, Social Media
February 10th, 2010 — 12:00am
2009 was a big year for augmented reality, and there are many predictions that 2010 will be even bigger; with accomplishments coming in the form of new technologies, devices, business models, and ways of having fun. But even as we go about building this emerging medium, we’re still relying largely on old-media style centralized understandings of the production models, form, and content of the augmented world. What happens when we grasp the new social and interaction possibilities of augmented reality?
I’m part of a panel titled The Next Wave of AR: Exploring Social Augmented Experiences that’s addressing this question at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose in late March / early April. We’ve got a good group of speakers that includes Tish Shute (Ugotrade), whurley * (whurleyvision llc),Jeremy Hight (Mission College, CA), and Thomas Wrobel (Lost Again). Our goal is to look ahead at how augmented reality will soon evolve to include — or be based on! — meaningful social interactions and dynamics at small and large group scales.
In the spirit of co-created social augmented experiences, we’re asking for audience contributions: in the form of simple scenarios that describe the future of social AR. What will it feel like? Who will you interact with? How will these experiences change everyday life?
Panel Summary (full description on the Where 2.0 site)
This panel will discuss shared augmented realities, considering some of the essential possibilities and challenges inherent in this new class of social augmented experiences. The format is presentation of a small set of scenarios (defined in advance, with audience input) describing likely future forms of shared augmented realities at differing scales of social engagement for discussion by a panel of leading practitioners in technology, experience design, networked urbanism, interface design, game design, and augmented reality.
Current augmented reality experiences put who you are, where you are, what you are doing, and what is around you at center stage. But we can already look beyond the first stage of interactions assuming a single user seeing simple arrows and tags indicating POIs, and begin to explore shared (multiuser/multisource) augmented realities.
These social augmented experiences will allow not only mashups, & multisource data flows, but dynamic overlays (not limited to 3d), created by distributed groups of users, linked to location/place/time, and syndicated to people who wish to engage with the experience by viewing and co-creating elements for their own goals and benefit.
Share your scenarios for the Next Wave of AR in the comments or elsewhere (tag nextwaveAR socialAR), and come to Where 2.0 and see the panel!
Comment » | Augmented Reality, Everyware, Social Media, The Media Environment