AiRWeb: Using AR to Extend Web Browsing Beyond Handheld Screens

TL;DR

AiRWeb introduces an augmented reality system that enhances mobile web browsing by allowing users to offload and organize web content in their physical environment, addressing screen size limitations.

Contribution

This paper presents a novel AR-based web browsing approach that enables personalized content offloading and spatial organization, with a functional prototype demonstrating its feasibility.

Findings

AiRWeb is learnable and usable based on preliminary user studies.

Users can effectively select and manipulate offloaded web content in AR.

Open challenges remain in activating offload modes effectively.

Abstract

Browsing the Web on mobile devices is often cumbersome due to their limited screen space. We investigate a phone+AR Web browsing approach, AiRWeb, that leverages the structural properties of Web pages to allow users to seamlessly select and offload arbitrary Web content into the space surrounding them. Focusing on flexibility, AiRWeb lets users decide what to offload, when to do so, and how offloaded content is arranged, enabling personalized organization tailored to the task at hand. We developed a fully functional prototype using standard Web technologies, that covers the complete interaction workflow, from the selection of elements to offload from the phone to their manipulation in the air. Results from a preliminary study conducted using this prototype suggest that AiRWeb is learnable and usable, while also revealing open design challenges around offload mode activation in particular.