Thesis Defence: Exploring Augmented Reality Solutions to Facilitate Co-Located Engagement

Biswapriyo Chakrabarty, supervised by Dr. Khalad Hasan, will defend their thesis titled “Exploring Augmented Reality Solutions to Facilitate Co-Located Engagement” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Computer Science.

An abstract for Biswapriyo Chakrabarty’s thesis is included below.

Defences are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Please email khalad.hasan@ubc.ca to receive the Zoom link for this defence.

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ABSTRACT

The worldwide adoption of social media has connected billions of individuals and has changed the way people interact with one another. As augmented reality (AR) is making its way into social media, it can potentially transform the way people communicate with each other in person as well. With advancements in mixed reality, people are already using AR in a multitude of ways in their day-to-day lives. However, the use of AR in social media is still limited to AR stickers and games. People have yet to see the full potential of augmented reality in social media, especially in real-time interactions. In this paper, we investigate how people would prefer to share their personal and professional information on an AR platform in different locations. Furthermore, we collaborated with professional designers to generate design guidelines for a co-located augmented reality application named CLAR. The key findings from the design sessions included recommendations on the size, shape, and position of the user interface elements, content type to represent a user profile, data-sharing modes, communication tools, and input techniques. Based on these guidelines, we then developed a prototype application to gather feedback on the proposed system and how this application could enhance in-person communication. The study revealed that the participants gave positive feedback on the CLAR app’s interface, expressed willingness to share information to connect with new individuals, and reported high satisfaction with the overall user experience.