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Over the decades, technologies envisioned by pioneers such as Douglas Engelbart are becoming a reality. AI has become an important driver for technological progress, posing questions for the future of human-computer interaction. Our research group at Fraunhofer FIT looks back on a 51 year long research tradition that started with Engelbart’s vision and followed through the larger developments of HCI from the introduction of CSCW up to successful projects involving the engineering of large software systems in practice. In this paper, we outline the history of our institute against the background of trends in HCI, working out the cornerstones and “useful practices” from our research tradition towards our vision of the future of a human-centred AI/IA, with the expectation that this analysis may be useful for similar organisations. In doing so, we illustrate tensions between theory and application, humans and technology, and show how keeping those aspects in balance is an important challenge and chance for bringing disruptive emerging technologies successfully into practice.

The presented demonstrator showcases the potential of augmented reality (AR) smartglasses in the sterile supply chain. In the scope of the project "Smartglasses in der Sterilgutver-sorgung", we developed an application to investigate on the applicability of smartglasses and AR paradigms during the reprocessing of used operational tools. The demonstrator was developed and tested using the iterative user-centered approach involving actual employees of the respective domain.

The advent of Building Information Modelling (BIM) provides geometry data that can be easily used for visualisations. We present six demonstrators made from the same data using similar workflows. They cover different categories of mobile devices, ranging from head-mounted displays to smartphones and tablets with inside-out positional tracking. They showcase cross-media visualisations depending on the device capabilities, which vary from a sophisticated car-based AR-setup, over wired and wireless VR, to see-through AR on smart glasses, and video-based AR on tablets.

This paper reports on a study of AREEF, a multi-player Underwater Augmented Reality (UWAR) experience for swimming pools. Using off-the-shelf components combined with a custom made waterproof case and an innovative game concept, AREEF puts computer game technology to use for recreational and educational purposes in and under water. After an experience overview, we present evidence gained from a user-centred design-process including a pilot study with 3 kids and a final evaluation with 36 kids. Our discussion covers technical findings regarding marker placement, tracking, and device handling, as well as design related issues like virtual object placement and the need for extremely obvious user interaction and feedback when staging a mobile underwater experience.

The Smartphone Project (TSP) is an interactive dance-performance in a professional setting that exploits the communication channels provided by smartphone-apps as a new material in the dance-theatre domain. We present an account of the experience and its staging. Based on an initial study with 36 participants from the audience, we present results and discuss lessons learned from this project that might guide similar future work.

This paper presents a suite for configuring and deploying mobile, location-based educational games for natural history museums. We propose a novel approach that uses structured museum-data as game-content and present an initial study thereof. The overall aim is to enable domain-experts, like teachers or museum educators, to create educational games for off-the-shelf mobile phones without requiring neither bespoke programming skills nor expensive setups. Our approach builds on the combination of two strands of work: 1.) structuring and providing museum-assets as linked data, and 2.) template-based content creation for mobiles games. This is thought to facilitate reuse of existing data and foster its maintenance on the one hand, as well as providing a timely and engaging mobile interface to museum content on the other hand. Our study is based on two rounds of user-tests with think-aloud observations and questionnaires, and on the developers' notes and reflections that stem from introductory workshops at four natural history museums from the Natural Europe project consortium. We found that both, the workflow for content-creation and the mobile end-user app have high hedonic as well as pragmatic qualities. Thus, the test results indicate that our approach might provide guidance for future work in this domain.

Designing Augmented Reality location aware games requires an understanding of how form and content issues impact on presence. A study of 60 players was conducted using questionnaires, video analysis and interviews. The results indicate that content including: moral dilemmas, strong narratives, using real locations effectively and applying simple physical behavior within virtual characters to improve embodiment have a positive impact on player experience. The results are presented in the form of guidelines.

This paper presents the location-based game Tidy City and the accompanying authoring tools that enable users to create new scavenger hunt like missions. In the game the players need to physically explore their city by interpreting clues to find the correct target destination. The in-situ authoring tool Tidy City Scout enables designers to likewise walk around the city and collecting notes, images and GPS data for potential riddles. The riddles are finalized in a web-based authoring tool and then published to all players of the game. The game and its tools are freely accessible for non-commercial purposes at http://totem.fit.fraunhofer.de/tidycity.

Previous research has proposed that authoring tools for location-aware mobile experiences should be extended to reveal the usually hidden ubiquitous computing infrastructure to designers so that they can take account of its characteristics when placing digital content. This paper explores this idea in practice, describing how a suite of such authoring tools has evolved through an iterative process of collaborating with artists to create a location-based game. Reflections on the design process identify the need to support the mobile capture, verification and annotation of mapping data 'in the field' and the visualization and use of this data back 'in the studio' as part of a tightly integrated workflow. We also identify the need for more powerful visualizations that can deal with multiple layers of information representing different locations and networks, and that can move between abstract and detailed views of the data on demand.

Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) is still a fragmented space to design for due to the rapidly evolving hardware, the interdisciplinarity of teams, and a lack of standards and best practices. We interviewed 26 professional AR/VR designers and developers to shed light on their tasks, approaches, tools, and challenges. Based on their work and the artifacts they generated, we found that AR/VR application creators fulfill four roles: concept developers, interaction designers, content authors, and technical developers. One person often incorporates multiple roles and faces a variety of challenges during the design process from the initial contextual analysis to the deployment. From analysis of their tool sets, methods, and artifacts, we describe critical key challenges. Finally, we discuss the importance of prototyping for the communication in AR/VR development teams and highlight design implications for future tools to create a more usable AR/VR tool chain.