ToARist: An Augmented Reality Tourism App created through User-Centred Design

TL;DR

This paper presents ToARist, a novel augmented reality tourism app developed through iterative user-centred design, emphasizing usability and user feedback, with real-world testing in a UK city.

Contribution

It introduces a functional AR tourism app created via a structured user-centred design process, highlighting practical development and evaluation methods.

Findings

Users found the app usable despite technical issues.

Iterative design improved user experience.

Technical challenges impacted AR usability.

Abstract

Through Augmented Reality (AR), virtual graphics can transform the physical world. This offers benefits to mobile tourism, where points of interest (POIs) can be annotated on a smartphone screen. Although several of these applications exist, usability issues can discourage adoption. User-centred design (UCD) solicits frequent feedback, often contributing to usable products. While AR mock-ups have been constructed through UCD, we develop a novel and functional tourism app. We solicit requirements through a synthesis of domain analysis, tourist observation and semi-structured interviews. Through four rounds of iterative development, users test and refine the app. The final product, dubbed ToARist, is evaluated by 20 participants, who engage in a tourism task around a UK city. Users regard the system as usable, but find technical issues can disrupt AR. We finish by reflecting on our design and critiquing the challenges of a strict user-centred methodology.