Augmented Reality (AR) has become increasingly accessible with the arrival and further development of smartphones. Smartphones provide the necessary tools for AR development: a camera for object recognition and Global Positioning System (GPS) for user localization information. As the AR user interface and interaction blend with the occurrences in the environment through the device camera view, its integration enhances the user experience of many mobile applications. Mobile applications for navigation have been utilizing AR to improve the usability of smartphone application-based way-finding experiences through the facilitation of more enhanced engagement with the necessary information. This thesis presents two user experience studies conducted with the aim of analyzing the navigation experience within Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) in the context of a self-guided tour of Aalto Design Factory.
The research clusters a set of user experience guidelines for the MAR self-guided tour experience through a literature review on AR heuristics and the two-part empirical study. The study aims to gather qualitative data through user evaluations. The first study consists of user evaluations of three existing mobile applications with elements relevant to spatial guidance and tours. For the second study, the qualitative data collected from the user experience analysis of benchmarks was mapped out in the form of four user experience storyboards tailored to a self-guided navigation experience in Aalto Design Factory. The storyboards were tested by seven users, four of which are experts in the field of AR and user experience research, and the remaining three are non-expert users. The findings highlight both the functional and dysfunctional aspects of the experience while examining whether the system is inclusive for a broad window of users with varying needs. The findings from the two-part empirical study are proposed as guidance for potential future work in the development of a smartphone application for self-guided campus tours in Aalto University.
