Title: Creating Augmented Reality Authoring Tools Informed by Designer Workflow and Goals

Maribeth Gandy Coleman
School of Interactive Computing
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology

Date: Thursday, August 16, 2012
Time: 12:00 - 3:00 pm
Location: TSRB 132


Committee:

• Dr. Blair MacIntyre, School of Interactive Computing, Advisor
• Dr. Beth Mynatt, School of Interactive Computing
• Dr. Keith Edwards, School of Interactive Computing
• Dr. Beki Grinter, School of Interactive Computing
• Dr. Jay Bolter, School of Literature, Communication, and Culture

Abstract:
In a 20-year period, AR has gone from being viewed as a heavyweight technology, only appropriate for industrial and military applications, to a new medium for a variety of commercial and artistic applications. As a result there has been an increasing need for more tools to support AR experience design and development that fully address the needs of non-technologists. From my own AR research, I learned that a critical component for the advancement of AR was accessible authoring tools that support an established content pipeline, rapid prototyping, and user experience testing. It is known that the full potential of a new medium will go unrealized until it is accessible to and usable by a broad and diverse community. AR shares underlying technologies with a variety of more mature media such as games, VR, film, and the web with existing workflows and tools, which are used by a variety of creators. Therefore, we created an AR authoring tool informed by these established approaches and creator design goals that allowed developers with a range of technical expertise to explore the AR medium.
    In this thesis I present four main contributions. The first was an exploration of the AR design space to investigate “big ideas” in the field, focused on close collaboration with designers and deployment to real users. This work informed the development of the Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART) that emphasized the needs of developers outside AR research and resulted in guidelines for AR authoring tools, which were validated via internal and external projects. I then carried out a qualitative study of long term DART use that provided insight into the successes and failures of DART as well as additional understanding of AR authoring needs. Lastly, I trace two main threads to highlight the impact of this work, the development of the AR Second Life system and the creation of the Argon AR web browser.