A Look at the Effects of Handheld and Projected Augmented-reality on a Collaborative Task

This paper presents a comparative study between two popular AR systems during a collocated collaborative task. The goal of the study is to start a body of knowledge that describes the effects of different AR approaches in users' experience and performance; i.e., to look at AR not as a single entity with uniform characteristics. Pairs of participants interacted with a game of Match Pairs in both hand-held and project AR conditions, and their engagement, preference, task completion time, and number of game moves was recorded. Participants were also video-recorded during play for additional insights. No significant differences were found between users' self-reported engagement, and 56.25% of participants described a preference for the hand-held experience. On the other hand, participants completed the task significantly faster in the projected condition, despite having performed more game moves (card flips). We conclude the paper by discussing the effect of these two AR prototypes in participants' communication strategies, and how to design hand-held interfaces that could elicit the benefits of projected AR.