Week 8 Summary
Pre-Patterns for Designing Embodied Interactions in Handheld Augmented Reality Games
Any problem with a new alternative technology is, that its development is lead by developers. The initial work and examples on it focus on the technical boundaries they are able to push. However, a problem that starts becoming evident as the technology matures and starts finding its way into the hands of consumers is how to design those systems to be more intuitive and usable. This is very much a consideration with Augmented Reality applications, which present the user with the mixed setting of the virtual world infused on top of the real world. This paper deals with the task of setting design patterns (infact they call it pre-patterns, since the technology is evidently in its nascent stage and these patterns cannot be considered as rules, since the constraints and possibilities constantly keep changing as the technology keeps advancing.)
These design patterns lays down the experience of the researchers with AR systems over the years and can act as a quick handbook for new developers, as things to keep in mind when designing their own system and some examples of hacks people implemented to make the system more believable. The timing of this paper is also very timely with where we are with our projects, since it can guide us in our system design.
The authors start by talking about Embodied Interactions which talks about taking advantage of our understanding of people’s experience with their bodies and how they try to co-relate unfamiliar experiences with other previous experiences they may have had with similar systems.
The paper discusses various “pre-patterns” like Device Metaphors and talks about examples that came to my mind first as well. For example, it was amazing to me when I used the Wii, how easy it was get used to the new input medium, since the interactions were built into real world experiences of people. I play tennis in Wii, the same way I do in real life; I dunk a ball into the basket the same way I would in a real court. Similar examples are given for AR apps like using the phone as a magnifying glass or as a sniper gun. The pattern of Seamful design was particularly interesting which talked about circumventing technical shortcomings with creative ploys that try to hold the player within the seams of the system using game elements.
Also things like World Consistency and Landmarks re-iterate things we have been discussing in class like the need to utilize the physical world in some way, and making the physics and interaction between the real and virtual, as smooth as possible.
The task gallery: a 3D window manager
This paper discusses a unique way of performing task management in the Windows environment. This is not in the AR domain, and remotely in the virtual worlds domain. This is a unique approach to the Alt+Tab behaviour people utilize when switching between multiple windows (activities) which are a part of a bigger task. The metaphor utilized in the design is of a room where the task I am currently working on appears center stage and other related tasks appear as windows on the side walls, that I can click to select and bring them to the main focus area.
It was interesting to see the mention that this method evoked spatial memory and cognition. It brings to the fore my personal experience when working with multiple applications simultaneously, many times mult-tasking on different tasks. When I use Alt+Tab, I get all the running applications as small icons, which become difficult to differentiate between once the number of running tasks increases beyond a point. This experiment uses an interesting palette that allowed people to arrange different windows into a sub-group. This allows a spatial arrangement of windows and tasks which helps me remembering over time where I have placed a certain group of activities and help me locate them easily, based on the physical arrangement.
It also allows a physical metaphor of stacks of files and arrange files based on their priority.
However, looking at the interface, something that feels lost is the focus on the current task since there are so many widgets to organize stuff around.
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