The Challenges of Evaluating the Usability of Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented reality (AR) is a new and emerging technology that could benefit from evaluating its usability to better the user’s experience with the device or application. This is often done through usability testing and heuristic evaluations. However, AR technology presents some challenges when completing these usability evaluations. Practitioners need to keep in mind the hardware limitations of AR devices that may not be present with other computerized technology, consistency of the users’ environment plays a larger role in the AR experience, recognize that a novelty effect may occur and affect subjective scores, and choose heuristic sets that will best evaluate AR applications. Practitioners need to be aware of these challenges and overcome them to accurately assess the usability of these products to gain insights about what should be changed to make the overall experience with the product better.