As augmented reality and virtual reality systems gain prominence and are adopted, a new set of usability requirements are needed to assess ease of use.
My three children, currently 7, 10, and 12 years old, are very similar in their usage patterns of web sites. Ok, Club Penguin doesn’t present a lot of different types of interactions, but still, my kids share certain demographic and psychographic characteristics, as well as group experiences, that have homogenized their cognitive processes and expectations. However, as they interact with spatial systems, those requiring 3-dimensional perception and system/reality visual transisions, they vary widely in their interaction styles and abilities, and a system optimized for one would not be optimal for the other two.
A couple of situations arose today in a big box store that made me think about this. The first was in the grocery line. I always have my kids do the self-checkout and payment, up to the point where I need to sign the pad. They do not perform these tasks equally quickly or easily. In part there are age effects, but there are other factors that do not seem to be age or gender dependent.
The second example was the video kiosk. They need to use a screen to select a movie, and then need to do the credit card payment, and finally need to eject or insert videos. Again, their 3-d perceptions differentiate their abilities. I also saw this when they play sports on the wii.
Of course, these examples have nothing to do with augmented reality, which has more to do with the underlying digital data associated with a physical 3-dimensional space or context. But they made me think about aspects of cognition that will determine ease of use of these near-future systems, and how inadequate today’s heuristic evaluation criteria are going to be for assessing them.
Written by Paul Bryan, Usography Corporation (www.usography.com)
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