top3 Mobile AR Application — Experience on Design Principles
This is a blog for SIT183 Practical Week 3.
In this week’s practical session, I’m instructed to use a mobile augmented reality application in order to describe my experience with the design principles of the application itself.
The name of the mobile AR application I’ve tested is top3 AR|Augmented Reality 3D.
top3AR is a mobile AR application that gives the user the ability to allocate furniture into their environment using augmented reality technology.
- Affordance
When using the feature, the app will give a clear instruction on how the user can interact with the objects, such as touching the object using 1 finger will move the object and touching it with 2 fingers will rotate the object. By giving instructions each time the user uses the furniture-allocating feature, I have a good understanding on how I will be able to interact with the object.
- Feedback
The feature doesn’t offer haptic feedback when the user allocates the object, such as sound or vibration. For my preference, I think it doesn’t really matter because feedback is more useful for mobileAR applications that are games which require more interactions between the user and the object. In this case for only allocating furnitures, feedback isn’t really necessary as long as the user’s goal is accomplished.
- Design Consistency
The design provided in the app is clean with a simple white color palette and is consistent throughout the flow of the application, making me as the user comfortable when using the features.
- Compliance With Known Standards/Guidelines/Principles
As far as my observation, this mobile AR application is up with the standards of the augmented reality user experience, fulfilling the user’s expectations on using augmented reality with giving a sense of immersion when the user tries out the furniture-allocating feature.
- Discoverability
In the main homepage, the user is able to discover different kinds of furniture from different kinds of brands. When using the feature on allocating the furniture, the user can discover sub-features in a form of icons which can trigger actions such as adding another furniture, removing a furniture, buying the furniture, and refreshing the action. What I observe is that while the AR feature itself is simple enough, the application still insists that I have a good discoverability when using the app such as discovering many kinds of furniture.
- Scalability Of The Environment
I think the app gives a good instruction when scanning our environment and makes it as instant as possible. The user can further rescale the size of the furniture they’re trying out by moving the object using one finger and two fingers to rotate it in order to get a complete view of the furniture.
- Reliability
My experience as a user is that I can heavily rely on this app for placing the virtual furniture on the environment that has been scaled, making the user experience of the augmented reality flow smoothly. I can also rely the app when having difficulties. One of the example is when the app gives me a useful instruction when not scanning the environment properly.
