Evan Barba

BragFish: exploring physical and social interaction in co-located handheld augmented reality games

In this paper, we present our research on social interaction in co-located handheld augmented reality (AR) games. These games are characterized by shared physical spaces that promote physical awareness among players, and individual gaming devices that support both public and private information. One result of our exploration of the design and evaluation of such games is a prototype called BragFish. Through BragFish, we aim to investigate the connections between the observed game experience (focusing on social and physical interaction) and the designed affordances of our AR handheld game. Our evaluation of BragFish shows that most of our participants form strategies for social play by leveraging visual, aural and physical cues from the shared space. Moreover, we use this as an example to motivate discussions on how to improve social play experiences for co-located handheld games by designing for shared spaces.

Here We Are! Where Are We? Locating Mixed Reality in The Age of the Smartphone

Mixed reality (MR), from location- and context-aware systems through immersive augmented reality applications, has been studied in research labs for more than two decades. With the advent of the modern smartphone, and the rapid adoption of wireless broadband technologies, this research is moving out of the lab and into the real world. Beyond just providing a platform for MR to reach a broad range of users, the capabilities and limitations of the smartphone provide a set of constraints on what kinds of applications can and cannot be delivered to consumers that have fundamentally changed how researchers think about MR. We examine previous definitions of MR, and reimagine the term as a class of experiences occurring in an ecosystem consisting of the smartphone, the cloud, and the user. Using a selection of current MR applications as a lens, we identify three key areas of continuing evolution and suggest how the development of a next-generation MR environment can help us channel the future growth of MR in research, industrial, and consumer communities.

Pre-patterns for designing embodied interactions in handheld augmented reality games

The game industry and related research communities have shown a surge of interest in reality-based interfaces that create “embodied” game play experiences. Handheld AR (HAR) is a reality-based interface that renders digital objects onto a players perception of the physical world. HAR creates a hybrid space in which players can leverage their existing physical and social skills to interact with the game system and with each other. Although HAR has received some attention in the world of handheld gaming, there is little research that summarizes and communicates design principles and implications across multiple examples. In this paper, we analyze and generate design lessons from dozens of HAR games, drawn from academic and commercial AR games, and also our years of experience designing and teaching HAR game design. We summarize our experience in this new field into a set of design “pre-patterns” as a means of formalizing significant design lessons derived from these existing practices into repeatable principles and solutions. We contribute to both the game and interaction design communities with pre-patterns that support embodied game play.

Thinking inside the box: Making meaning in a Handheld AR experience

Augmented Reality (AR) applications and experiences delivered on mobile devices are an emerging class of technologies that are gathering momentum in the areas of gaming, tourism, education and marketing. In this paper we analyze [inbox], an immersive Handheld Augmented Reality (HAR) experience that takes place inside a shipping container, and contains many elements of each of these genres of HAR experiences. We discuss the holistic design approach we used in creating this experience. As well as highlight specific methods that leverage the capabilities of HAR to communicate specific concepts and information, while simultaneously allowing for multiple user interpretations. Finally we suggest a course of research that is likely to yield consistent design methodologies appropriate across all genres of HAR experiences.

Lessons from a class on handheld augmented reality game design

This paper describes the structure, format, and outcome of an experimental class in Handheld Augmented Reality Game Design conducted as an inter-institutional collaboration between the Georgia Institute of Technology and Savannah College of Art and Design. It analyzes several unique elements of the class, especially the need for rapid prototyping of multiple games when exploring game design using novel game technology, and highlights important issues regarding interdisciplinary collaboration and mobile augmented reality gaming. The paper also discusses several approaches taken by students in completing class assignments, which suggest viable design strategies for the creation of future handheld augmented reality experiences.

Continuous Control Paradigms for Direct Brain Interfaces

Direct Brain Interfaces (DBIs) offer great possibilities for people with severe disabilities to communicate and control their environments. However, many DBI systems implement discrete selection, such as choosing a letter from an alphabet, which offers limited control over certain tasks. Continuous control is important for applications such as driving a wheelchair or drawing for creative expression. This paper describes two projects currently underway at the Georgia Tech BrainLab exploring continuous control interface paradigms for an EEG-based approach centered on responses from visual cortex, and functional near Infrared (fNIR) imaging of the language center of the brain.

Mirror Worlds: Experimenting with Heterogeneous AR

Until recently, most content on the Internet has not been explicitly tied to specific people, places or things. However, content is increasingly being geo-coded and semantically labeled, making explicit connections between the physical world around us and the virtual world in cyberspace. Most augmented reality systems simulate a portion of the physical world, for the purposes of rendering a hybrid scene around the user. We have been experimenting with approaches to terra-scale, heterogeneous augmented reality mirror worlds, to unify these two worlds. Our focus has been on the authoring and user-experience, for example allowing ad-hoc transition between augmented and virtual reality interactions for multiple co-present users. This form of ubiquitous virtual reality raises several research questions involving the functional requirements, user affordances and relevant system architectures for these mirror worlds. In this paper, we describe our experiments with two mirror world systems and some lessons learned about the limitations of deploying these systems using massively multiplayer and dedicated game engine technologies.

A Primer on Spatial Scale and Its Application to Mixed Reality

As mixed reality grows in popularity, the concepts and language we use to describe it will need to evolve as well. Having such concepts will allow for better interdisciplinary collaboration in both the arts and sciences, help to inform the creation of new software tools that enable the further evolution of the field, and will enable mixed reality research to advance scientific understanding in other disciplines. We provide an explication of the concept of spatial scale, including its relevant history in the fields of psychology and geography, and demonstrate its relevance to mixed reality. Through two case studies we show that spatial scale can operate effectively as a system of classification and analysis for mixed reality, and identify two concepts—scale transitions and the scale/complexity tradeoff—as critical to using this concept in future discussions of mixed reality.