AR 2.0: Social Media in Mobile Augmented Reality

The goal of this thesis is to design, implement and evaluate novel techniques for integrating social media into handheld Augmented Reality (AR) applications. Augmenting the physical environment with information is an idea prospected for over twenty years within the AR research community. The availability of mobile phones as an affordable platform for mobile AR applications lead for the first time to a wide awareness of the public. For instance, AR browsers, applications that allow users to browse information registered to places or objects in the real world, are now installed on several millions of phones. Despite the fact that AR browsers have arrived in the mass market, we argue that they are solely used for browsing information while at the same time lacking in amount and variety of information that can be accessed. This is caused by the current authoring tools aiming at professionals and do not permit a spontaneous creation of content in place, while also focussing on rather simple content forms. In the first part of this thesis, we want to shed light on the adoption of AR browsers to the public, by presenting results of two conducted studies. The results are later used for developing the concept of Augmented Reality 2.0 as the next evolution of Augmented Reality. Augmented Realities 2.0 utmost concern is to not only see users of AR applications as consumers, but also as a producers of content (”Prosumer”). In preparations for our implemented prototypes, we present fundamental technologies such as a precise tracking for handheld devices and an AR framework that can be used to implement AR 2.0 applications. In the second part of this thesis, we present novel prototypes integrating social media in various forms into mobile AR applications. Lastly, an assessment of these prototypes is done based on user feedback and observations made through user studies. This thesis extends the current understanding on the adoption of AR browsers and gives requirements helping developers to make informed design decision when building next generation AR browsers relying on user-generated content.