Measuring Presence in Augmented Reality Environments: Design and a First Test of a Questionnaire

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new questionnaire to measure the sense of presence in augmented reality environments and reports initial testing results from a study with 385 participants.

Contribution

It presents the design of a specialized questionnaire for AR presence and provides first empirical data validating its use.

Findings

The questionnaire effectively measures presence in AR environments.

Initial results show reliable data from 385 participants.

The study demonstrates the questionnaire's potential for future AR research.

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) enriches a user's real environment by adding spatially aligned virtual objects (3D models, 2D textures, textual annotations, etc) by means of special display technologies. These are either worn on the body or placed in the working environment. From a technical point of view, AR faces three major challenges: (1) to generate a high quality rendering, (2) to precisely register (in position and orientation) the virtual objects (VOs) with the real environment, and (3) to do so in interactive real-time (Regenbrecht, Wagner, and Baratoff, 2002). The goal is to create the impression that the VOs are part of the real environment. Therefore, and similar to definitions of virtual reality (Steuer, 1992), it makes sense to define AR from a psychological point of view: Augmented Reality conveys the impression that VOs are present in the real environment. In order to evaluate how well this goal is reached, a psychological measurement of this type of presence is necessary. In the following, we will describe technological features of AR systems that make a special questionnaire version necessary, describe our approach to the questionnaire development, and the data collection strategy. Finally we will present first results of the application of the questionnaire in a recent study with 385 participants.