Workspace Guardian: Investigating Awareness of Personal Workspace Between Co-Located Augmented Reality Users.

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Augmented Reality Systems
• Spatial Computing

Background:

• Augmented reality (AR) systems are becoming smaller and more integrated into daily life.
• Future AR use will involve multiple users in shared physical spaces, necessitating research into co-located interactions.
• Existing research often focuses on collaborative AR, but independent work in shared AR environments is under-explored.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate user behavior in co-located augmented reality (AR) settings for independent work.
• To evaluate techniques for enhancing awareness of personal workspace boundaries in shared AR environments.
• To compare the effectiveness of different boundary visualization methods in preventing workspace intrusions.

Main Methods:

• Comparison of three distinct techniques for managing personal workspace awareness in co-located AR: displaying all virtual content, visualizing bounding box outlines, and using self-defined workspace boundaries.
• User study observing behavior and measuring workspace encroachments across the different visualization conditions.
• Analysis of user interactions and spatial awareness within a shared AR environment.

Main Results:

• The self-defined workspace boundary technique resulted in a significantly higher number of personal workspace encroachments compared to other methods.
• Visualizing bounding box outlines and showing all virtual content offered better protection of personal space.
• User behavior indicated challenges in maintaining spatial awareness and respecting boundaries in shared AR.

Conclusions:

• Self-defined workspace boundaries are not sufficient for promoting personal space awareness in co-located AR independent work.
• Boundary visualization techniques, particularly bounding boxes, are more effective in mitigating workspace intrusions.
• Further research is needed to develop robust methods for managing spatial awareness and personal boundaries in shared augmented reality environments.