Mixed & Augmented Reality
Hospitable design for new realities
A fond fascination for tech and story has influenced work and play across my entire life. My undergrad honors thesis in 2005 studied then-nascent Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), making the argument that blurring the lines between fiction and reality could help us to rediscover wonder and delight.
I still believe that! But I now understand the need to design with care and consent — immersive technologies can also distort realities in ways that cause harm.
In December 2022, I completed a Master of Science in Public Interest Technology (“PIT” — Bruce Schneier maintains a fantastic resource guide about this relatively new discipline), seeking answers to these questions:
How can PIT principles blend with UX practice to care for real humans in digital spaces?
What does caring product design look like in an anticipated future of wearable consumer AR?
Elevate AR
An elevator button panel is an unexpected physical UI input, but AR narratives can take surprising and visceral forms.
I led a grant-funded, cross-disciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students in a multifaceted exploration of AR storytelling using Apple’s ARKit.
As project lead, I coordinated the efforts of separate teams focused on narrative, design, and engineering considerations. I used the project as an opportunity to pursue my own PIT questions about the ethics of care for hospitable design of AR experiences intended for public spaces.
The final outcomes for the project included an ARKit prototype for iOS and a public showcase.
A platform for AR storytelling
Care for Reality
“Care for Reality: Ethical design for public Augmented Reality experiences” surveys the history of consumer XR and anticipates the likelihood of a near-future tipping point in which wearable AR becomes public, persistent, and prevalent, as we have seen with the general computing following the launch of Apple’s iPhone in 2007.
Capstone
Considerations
CARE FOR THE GUEST considers the person wearing the device: body (e.g., ergonomics, situational awareness, fatigue & eyestrain, motion sickness), mind (e.g., emotional bleed, distraction & overstimulation, human connection), and self (e.g., clarity, agency, identity, privacy).
CARE FOR THE BYSTANDER considers other people in the sensed environment of the wearer: their awareness of the wearer’s computing context and human connection to them, as well considerations for their agency and consent.
CARE FOR REALITY is focused less on practical instructions than reflexive values: How do we make product decisions that add meaning to, rather than outright replace, the beauty of reality? I propose four guiding principles: uplift humans, prioritize the real, minimize sensing, support easy & powerful control by the wearer.
Lyric Peate
Lead UX/UI Analyst at NAU (reporting to me)
