AR Interactions
Intro to AR interactions
AR provides a new space for immersive interactions. Unlike virtual reality environments that obscure your surroundings, AR allows you to blend digital content with physical surroundings.
With being able to see your physical surroundings, AR provides a new context for interactive feedback to make experiences feel more tangible.
Common interaction patterns
Many common interactions are similar to what we see in 2D screen-based devices and in VR. These include gesture based interactions like:
Tap/click
Drag/rotate
Pinch to scale
Swipe
Pointing/hovering
However, there are some new interactions that can be considered in AR (kinesthetic,s sensory modalities)
Physical space anchors to ground content
Multi-user collaboration
Physics of objects reacting to surroundings
Common feedback patterns
Audio (small sounds, music played)
Visual (UI elements)
Haptic (vibration of controllers)
Takeaways from initial research
From my research into these interaction patterns and feedback, a notable point made was how AR provides a whole new context for immersive media, yet most users tend to view these as a static screen. Google’s evaluation of this mentions that their “research shows that apps explicitly instructing users to move closer or move around are more engaging and successful than those that don’t.” (link to this article in sources below)
Usability testing AR Interactions
For my project in Spring 2025, I am conducting a usability test to compare different interaction patterns in AR. Here is a link to the usability study planning (results to be added later).