From Following to Understanding: Investigating the Role of Reflective Prompts in AR-Guided Tasks to Promote Task Understanding

TL;DR

This study explores how reflective prompts in AR instructions can enhance user understanding and engagement during task completion, demonstrating significant improvements in task comprehension and proactive information seeking.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach of integrating reflective prompts into AR-guided tasks and provides design guidelines based on empirical evaluations.

Findings

Reflective prompts significantly improved task understanding.

Participants engaged in more proactive information seeking.

Design guidelines for AR reflective prompts were developed.

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) is a promising medium for guiding users through tasks, yet its impact on fostering deeper task understanding remains underexplored. This paper investigates the impact of reflective prompts -- strategic questions that encourage users to challenge assumptions, connect actions to outcomes, and consider hypothetical scenarios -- on task comprehension and performance. We conducted a two-phase study: a formative survey and co-design sessions (N=9) to develop reflective prompts, followed by a within-subject evaluation (N=16) comparing AR instructions with and without these prompts in coffee-making and circuit assembly tasks. Our results show that reflective prompts significantly improved objective task understanding and resulted in more proactive information acquisition behaviors during task completion. These findings highlight the potential of incorporating reflective elements into AR instructions to foster deeper engagement and learning. Based on data from both studies, we synthesized design guidelines for integrating reflective elements into AR systems to enhance user understanding without compromising task performance.