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GuideMe: A Mobile Augmented Reality System to Display User Manuals for Home App

GuideMe: A Mobile Augmented Reality System to Display User Manuals for Home Appliances Lars M¨ uller1, Ilhan Aslan2, and Lucas Kr¨ ußen1 1 FZI Research Center for Information Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany 2 ICT&S Center, University of Salzburg, Salzburg, Austria Abstract. In this paper we present GuideMe, a mobile augmented reality application that provides assistance in using appliances. In or- der to explore how users perceive GuideMe, as a design of an interac- tive and digital manual, we conducted two user studies. We compared GuideMe ﬁrst with paper-based manuals and then with video-based manuals. Our results indicate that the paper-based manuals were supe- rior regarding typical usability measures (i.e. error rates and completion times). However, participants reported a signiﬁcantly higher perceived task load when using paper-based manuals. Due to a better user expe- rience, GuideMe was preferred by 9 of 10 participants over paper-based manuals. We present our design in detail and discuss broader implica- tions of designing digital manuals. Furthermore, we introduce a custom format to deﬁne manual structures for mobile augmented reality enabled manuals. 1 Introduction Many of today’s challenges in designing interfaces relate to the spread of tech- nology to our homes and everyday lives with a shift from a rather narrow task- orientation to qualities of everyday experiences [3,2]. For example, ten years ago a baking oven would be operated by choosing temperature and mode. Today, an oven can be programmed to start at a predeﬁned time with a predeﬁned temperature and several operation modes. Interfaces of everyday products in our homes have gained in complexity. Getting familiar with all the features that such a product provides is challenging. In order to assist users, to handle their appliances and consumer electronics, manuals are created by technical writers and illustrators, who carefully describe the operation of the product. However, very few people enjoy interacting with a manual; i.e., going through a book con- sisting of technical writings and illustrations to ﬁnd out how to operate a system or to solve an existing problem. Oﬀthe shelf mobile devices could be used as digital manuals and thereby performance and the user experience of interacting with manuals could be improved. However, designing a digital manual based on inspirations taken from physical manuals can be a cumbersome task. In this paper we present GuideMe, a design that aims at exploring alterna- tives to traditional paper-based manuals. GuideMe is an interactive “digital” D. Reidsma, H. Katayose, and A. Nijholt (Eds.): ACE 2013, LNCS 8253, pp. 152–167, 2013. c ⃝Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2013 GuideMe: A Mobile Augmented Reality System 153 manual informed by properties of mobile devices and augmented reality technol- ogy. Hereby, our intention was to make use of people’s familiarity with mobile devices and create a design that would be timelier and exciting to use. This paper is structured as follows. In the next section we provide the back- ground on mobile augmented reality and current practices for user manuals. Then we discuss in more general how GuideMe ﬁts into current concepts and notions in interaction design. Building on these fundamentals we present details of the technical implementation of the prototype. Hereby, we introduce a custom format to deﬁne manual structures, which we refer to as User Manual Markup Language (UMML): an XML based format to deﬁne user manuals and especially technical illustrations. The GuideMe prototype is evaluated using manuals for two ovens and compared to a video tutorial and excerpts from the original printed manual. The results are summarized and discussed. 2 Background The development of GuideMe builds on knowledge from traditional user manual design and the technical progress in the ﬁeld of augmented reality (AR). 2.1 User Manuals User manuals are a part of the technical documentation of a product. The Secure- Doc guideline [18] states, “Products are not complete without documentation.” The guideline interprets, an important standard in technical documentation, the IEC 62079:2001 on “Preparation of instructions. Structuring, content and pre- sentation” [10] and helps designing the technical documentation of a product. It outlines the requirements that are induced by European law, such as to enable customers to use all features of a product and to protect customers of potential hazards. The guideline relates to factors that are often ignored when a product is accompanied by a user manual of poor quality. For instance, “High quality documentation helps reduce customer support costs,” because with the right in- formation at hand it enables customers to solve many problems without further assistance. Furthermore, “High quality documentation enhances customer sat- isfaction,” because a poorly designed user manual can prevent customers from exploring the full potential of a product. Another factor is that customers re- late the quality of the product to the quality of its documentation. Therefore, the need for high quality user manuals is given and the exploration of emerging technologies, such as augmented reality, to improve their usability is worthwhile. Although other formats are available, the standard format for user manuals is still the printed handbook. Typically it oﬀers an index that lists all functionalities or use cases of a product. Each one of them is then described in a step-by-step manner. Technical illustrations improve understandability by “expressive images that eﬀectively convey certain information via the visual channel to the human observer” [20]. Mainly for cost reasons comprehensive user manuals are often included as digital PDF documents on CD or for download. Although the content 154 L. M¨ uller, I. Aslan, and L. Kr¨ ußen is normally taken one-to-one from the printed version, it improves the aspects of information retrieval concerning ﬁnding the user manual itself (if available for download) and ﬁnding the relevant information in it by searching the document. 2.2 Augmented Reality Initially research in AR-based user manuals has been conducted using head- mounted displays (HMD) to provide information while having two free hands. The KARMA project uses such an HMD to convey step-by-step instructions and superimposed instructions to specialized mechanics [4]. Henderson et al. [9] built an advanced HMD-based AR interface and showed that their system improves the current documentation of mechanics. However, AR research currently ex- plores new platforms. An increasing number of AR applications uses the mobile phone to display virtual objects [7,5,13]. Furthermore, mobile projectors provide new means to augmented objects with information by projecting the interface directly on the surface of the object [11]. As early as 2001, the AR-PDA prototype [5] mentioned mobile AR manuals as one possible application domain. Since this time, researchers have explored dif- ferent technical implementations and hardware platforms. Hakkarainen et al. [7] actually applied mobile AR to user manuals to showcase their developed system that still relied on a server infrastructure to calculate the positioning of super- imposed instructions. Liu et al. [13] evaluated a new mobile AR approach in the domain of user manuals. They show that “real-time AR feedback on phys- ical actions in the real world” is beneﬁcial regarding usability and task load of users. The test was based on an adapted MIDI station that could provide such a feedback channel. The technology to build AR-based manuals is developing rapidly. First ap- plications are already available, e.g. an app to explain a new car model1 or a prototype of Aurasma that uses augmented reality to explain how to connect cables of a router2. These approaches cannot be generalized to other home ap- pliances. They are impressive technology demonstrations, and showcase state of the art marker-less object recognition of 3D objects. However, they require highly textured user interfaces and are tied to a speciﬁc car or appliance. The research focus shifts from the technological feasibility to the design of such applications. Several companies oﬀer mobile AR SDKs that support the development of AR applications for example Qualcomm3 and Metaio4. 3 Designing Digital Manuals for and with Mobile Devices From the beginning mobile devices have been recognized as personal digital assistants, which help to manage personal information. Later mobile devices 1 Audi A1 user manual http://itunes.apple.com/de/app/audi-a1-ekurzinfo/id436341817?mt=8 2 Aurasma Visual Browser http://www.aurasma.com/ 3 Vuforia SDK http://www.qualcomm.com/solutions/augmented-reality 4 Metaio http://www.metaio.com/ GuideMe: A Mobile Augmented Reality System 155 were also perceived as a tool that can manage contextual information. They have pervaded our everyday life, and the number of mobile applications is growing. As computational things become everyday things, what we design for can not be restricted to how to enable people to become more productive. Thus, there is a need for complementary design philosophies. [14] Redstr¨ om herby, refers to how HCI researchers used to focus on performance and supporting people in accomplishing tasks. In the last decade many re- searchers started to focus on creating new experiences enabled by mobile de- vices. De Sa and Churchill [16] argue that the new aﬀordances oﬀered by mobile augmented reality have potential to enhance users‘ experiences. More speciﬁcally they discuss how this can be achieved through the provision of digital informa- tion which is relevant for the user context. With mobile devices information that is digitally stored can be processed anywhere anytime. Consequently, more and more information is presented uploads/Geographie/ guide-me.pdf