Usability Principles for Augmented Reality based Kindergarten Applications

Abstract Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digital information over user’s real world. Designing and developing AR applications is a difficult task. It involves user interface designing, content generation according to the target audience so that the application is easy to understand, interactive, consistent and ease to use. To design these applications there are many design principles evidenced in existing literature such as learnability, affordance, simplicity etc. However, there are no studies in the literature which define most appropriate usability principles/guidelines for designing mobile based AR applications for kindergarten kids. Age is a significant factor to be considered in developing applications for kids especially when it comes to interaction techniques to be used in learning applications. The kids may not easily use and interact with the applications developed for the adults. Therefore, there is a need to identify the principles that should be kept in mind while developing AR applications according to the kids. The aim of our research is to develop usability principles for mobile based applications for kindergarten kids using AR. We proposed 23 usability principles by studying the existing literature on usability, design principles for AR applications, guidelines/principles for tangible interfaces. These principles would help other researcher and developers to create more interactive, learnable and easy to understand AR applications for kids solving the identified usability problems.