Augmented Exploration : Travelling through unknown realities

Abstract: This is a project exploring a possible future of embedded mobile augmented reality services in people's daily routine. The project was conduct- ed at Umeå Institute of Design as a MFA Thesis in Interaction Design. The constant development of technologies along- side with society’s increased usage of the mobile phone makes this medium more and more inter- esting amongst all age groups. The existing solu- tions focus on ways of communicating through short time interactions as well as on gameplays with a focus on storytelling. So far, these existing solutions are rarely implementing a service aspect for people's daily routine. The mobile augmented reality technology has the power to serve a variety of purposes, which are for now, not discovered. This lack of exploration creates challenges for the market and the user which leads to discourage in that medium. To understand the needs of the people and the language of the technology, I immersed myself into the augmentation of realities and conducted a thorough research with conversations with the target group and experts in the field, opportunity evaluations, and concepts testing. The insights gathered during the research brought the conclu- sion that the medium has the power to transfer knowledge by having the user experiencing rath- er than observing. This increases the chances of understanding and participating with information. This is why the project’s goal is to form a mobile AR service example, where the user feels motivat- ed to engage with their surroundings in their daily routine. The final outcome of the project consists of a plat- form which allows the user to explore the history of their current location. The platform is clustered in two areas. On the one hand a content library gathers information about explored locations. This information is displayed through a list and detail view of written information as well as through an immersive gallery. This gives the user the oppor- tunity to easily explore and share their discoveries with their communities. On the other hand an interactive map as well as a lens filter enables the user during their exploration to discover the infor- mation. Based on a data preview visualisation the user is able to create their own contextual digital gallery. This experience motivates the user to easily start discovering their location as well as building up routines based on that kind of interaction. This new service showcases possibilities to design for mobile AR as well as strengthen the relation be- tween the users and their environment.