Creating Augmented and Virtual Reality Applications: Current Practices, Challenges, and Opportunities Narges Ashtari1, Andrea Bunt2, Joanna McGrenere3, Michael Nebeling4, Parmit K. Chilana1 1Computing Science 2Computer Science 3Computer Science 4School of Information Simon Fraser University University of Manitoba University of British Columbia University of Michigan Burnaby, BC, Canada Winnipeg, MB, Canada Vancouver, BC, Canada Ann Arbor, MI, USA {nashtari, pchilana}@sfu.ca
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT While research on novel AR/VR tools is growing within the Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) devices human-computer interaction (HCI) community, we lack are becoming easier to access and use, but the barrier to entry insights into how AR/VR creators use today’s state-of-the- for creating AR/VR applications remains high. Although the art authoring tools and the types of challenges that they face. recent spike in HCI research on novel AR/VR tools is Findings from preliminary surveys, interviews, and promising, we lack insights into how AR/VR creators use workshops with AR/VR creators mostly shed light on today’s state-of-the-art authoring tools as well as the types of isolated aspects of the proposed AR/VR authoring tools challenges that they face. We interviewed 21 AR/VR [1,15]. We especially lack an understanding of motivations, creators, which we grouped into hobbyists, domain experts, needs, and barriers of the growing population of AR/VR and professional designers. Despite having a variety of creators who have little to no technical training in the motivations and skillsets, they described similar challenges relevant technologies and programming frameworks.