[2201.02558] Project IRL: Playful Co-Located Interactions with Mobile Augmented Reality

We present Project IRL (In Real Life), a suite of five mobile apps we created
to explore novel ways of supporting in-person social interactions with
augmented reality. In recent years, the tone of public discourse surrounding
digital technology has become increasingly critical, and technology’s influence
on the way people relate to each other has been blamed for making people feel
“alone together,” diverting their attention from truly engaging with one
another when they interact in person. Motivated by this challenge, we focus on
an under-explored design space: playful co-located interactions. We evaluated
the apps through a deployment study that involved interviews and participant
observations with 101 people. We synthesized the results into a series of
design guidelines that focus on four themes: (1) device arrangement (e.g., are
people sharing one phone, or does each person have their own?), (2) enablers
(e.g., should the activity focus on an object, body part, or pet?), (3)
affordances of modifying reality (i.e., features of the technology that enhance
its potential to encourage various aspects of social interaction), and (4)
co-located play (i.e., using technology to make in-person play engaging and
inviting). We conclude by presenting our design guidelines for future work on
embodied social AR.