In the last decade, Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR) hardware entered the consumer market, which broaden up potential use of VR and AR in everyday context. With everyday context we mean situations, environments or workflows that are part of everyday life. Examples may be the use of VR for data analysis as part of the data analyst’s workflow or the use of AR for supporting spatially dispersed workers in, e.g., maintaining of technical systems. To support research and development in this area of interest, we propose a one-day workshop on VR and AR in Everyday Context (VARECo) bringing together interested researchers and practitioners to discuss current and future work in this research domain. The workshop will be split into two parts: presentation of submitted and reviewed papers as well as an interactive part discussing current and future research topics in the field. The latter will be guided towards a common journal publication as follow-up activity.

Recommender systems have received the attention of the scientific community for a long time now and they have become a daily tool for internet users. Nonetheless, they are not commonly applied to physical settings, where having access to recommendations could be of great benefit, specially when combined with item comparison capabilities. Due to the latest augmented reality technology advances, it is possible to bring these concepts together. An intuitive action like visually comparing two products could be enhanced by 3D cues and suggestions. In such terms, we discuss the possibilities to improve the item exploration and decision-making stages of the recommending process by providing item comparison supported by 3D augmentations, offering a novel contribution to both augmented reality and recommender systems domains.

This work presents a prototypic system that uses augmented reality technology to support temporal coordination of spatial dispersed production team members. This system is used to investigate the potential benefit of augmented reality for temporal coordination. We will present a study design as well as various research questions to be considered in future work.

Current augmented reality (AR) glasses suffer from low field-of-view (FOV). AR content is usually created with this limitation in mind and provides primarily small volume experiences.

This paper discusses a selection of AR interactions in the context of everyday life that would benefit immensely from an increased FOV. For each proposed experience, we present and discuss a working proof-of-concept implementation that has been created using our spatial AR system to provide the necessary FOV.

Projection-based Augmented Reality (AR) might change the interactions with digital systems in future work environments. A lot of stationary projection-based AR assistive systems have been presented that might support future work processes. However, not much research has been done beyond stationary settings. With moving towards mobile settings, fast and robust object recognition algorithms are required that allow real-time tracking of physical objects as targets for the projected digital overlay. With this work, we present a portable projection-based AR platform that recognizes objects in real time and overlays physical objects with in-situ projections of digital content. We consider our system as a precursor to a future mobile projection-based assistive system. By presenting the system, we want to start a discussion in the HCI community about the potential of mobile projection-based AR in future work environments.

Virtual reality technology enables the immersion of a human user into a virtual environment. With virtual environments, reproducible situations such as office work can be created in which a human behaves and acts in response. Because of the reproducibility and the accompanied measurement tools offered by virtual reality technology, virtual reality can be used for empirical research in organizational psychology. In this paper, we present a system architecture for creating a virtual environment that allows to empirically investigate a persuasive interactive system that addresses the change of work habits.

Mixed reality gained much research attention in recent years due to the availability of capable hardware. Current smartphones allow people to immerse themselves in virtual worlds or explore digital artifacts through augmented reality applications. Schools, universities, and other educational establishment have started to equip students and pupils with tablets potentially capable of presenting mixed reality content. However, the development of compelling mixed reality applications that foster enhanced knowledge transfer lags behind. While the availability of mixed reality hardware offers new opportunities, it also creates challenges for content creators and educators. We discuss these challenges and opportunities and suggest directions for future research. We consider mixed reality as a chance to foster supportive and personalized learning experiences for everyone.

In this paper we present work done in a project that uses AR technology in intensive care. Our work shows how an advanced technology like AR can be established into professional care by pointing at aspects of our work that contributed to the identification of meaningful use cases and the acceptance of the technology among care staff. We also show what kind of challenges the introduction of AR in a domain like intensive home care causes and how we dealt with them. The aim of the paper is to peal out factors that may help in similar endeavours and lead to interesting discussions at the workshop.

In this paper, we present the concept and prototype of the Augmented Reality (AR) app InfoGrid for mobile devices, which enables museum visitors to experience digital media as an overlay for physical exhibits. With InfoGrid, it is possible to view 3D objects, videos, and animations, or listen to audio re-cordings prepared by museum professionals. InfoGrid interfaces with our web-based framework, the Network Environment for Multimedia Objects (NEMO), which stores and handles all data in a cloud-based semantic database. In this contribution, we present the usability field evaluation of InfoGrid in a nature museum, using the System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire and additional observations.

In this contribution, we present our research on applications for curators to digitally enrich their exhibition. One of the applications we developed is the Augmented Reality app called InfoGrid. The app consists of two components: first, museum professionals can use InfoGrid to augment physical exhibitions with digital content through the web-based content management platform, the ALS-Portal; second, visitors use InfoGrid on their own mobile devices to experience these digital augmentations of exhibits via AR. InfoGrid, as well as the ALS-Portal, interface with our backend system, the Network Environment for Multimedia Objects (NEMO). The NEMO framework provides ALS applications with their application logic, semantic models, and functions as the semantic data storage. Museum professionals can use ALS software to automatically process image or video footage to create 3D objects, which can be aligned and cleaned from artifacts in the ALS-Portal by the help of our web-based 3D object editor. ALS software also contains a web-based video editor, which enables curators to create and edit video files, which can be used in all ALS applications. Through the ALS-Portal, museum professionals can look into usage statistics to improve their exhibitions. We present a field setup of an exhibition of original paintings, sculptures and literature created by Günter Grass, the German Noble Prize winner for literature. The exhibition took place in the “Bremische Bürgerschaft” in the Hanseatic City of Bremen over a period of seven weeks.

Evolution in technology causes privacy issues, which are currently under intense discussion. Here, much attention is given to smart cameras, the Internet of Things and the Internet in general, while sonic AR systems are overlooked. Many users, for example, blindfold their laptop cameras with physical layers, but it seems as if no attention is drawn to the sonic hardware that can be hacked just like cameras. In this position paper, we highlight everyday situations that are prone to cause privacy problems through Sonic AR. We then look at current proposals to protect users from camera-caused privacy violations as examples and discuss how they could be adopted to prevent sonic information misuse. We conclude by stating that the current privacy discussion overlooks Sonic AR, although this is a channel across which even more detailed and hence, more sensitive, information can be communicated and misused.

An experiment with 66 subjects was conducted within an augmented reality (AR) order-picking task using Microsoft HoloLens. The objective of the experiment was to test the use of gamification in AR order-picking. Also, another goal was to identify problems in the development of the AR software as well as to detect general problems with the use of AR glasses in warehouse processes. Furthermore the user experience of the application in different age groups and genders was examined. In addition, the influence of the subject's technical affinity was considered. A qualitative survey showed that subjects found the augmented reality application intuitive and satisfying. We want to highlight with this article experimental and technical challenges when using Microsoft HoloLens in real working conditions.

In this work we describe a hybrid, hand-based interaction metaphor that makes remote and close objects in an HMD-based immersive virtual environment (IVE) seamlessly accessible. To accomplish this, different existing techniques, such as go-go and HOMER, were combined in a way that aims for generality, intuitiveness, uniformity and speed. A technique like this is one prerequisite for a successful integration of IVEs to professional everyday applications, such as data analysis workflows.

In recent years, the technologies in the field of virtual reality have evolved considerably. Espe-cially as a result of the further development in the field of head mounted displays, there is an increasingly broad field of application for activities in the professional and private life. Besides the optimization of the visual representation, developers are currently focusing on the integration of multimodal interaction methods and feedback strategies in order to make virtual environments increasingly more realistic. While existing systems are already able to provide users with multi-modal sensations via different sensory channels, the integration of systems for the presentation of environmental influences generally remains only slightly considered. Therefore, in this paper, we will address several aspects regarding the provision of wind and warmth in HMD-based virtual scenarios and introduce our implementation of a prototypical system which we want to discuss with the community.

In der heutigen Zeit sind Meetings nicht mehr physisch an einen Ort gebunden. Vor allem in der Wissensarbeit ergänzen Telefonate oder Skype-Konferenzen bereits seit langem klassische Face-to-Face-Meetings. Verschiedene Forschungsdiskurse, vor allem der computerunterstützten Gruppenarbeit, untersuchen bereits seit nun mehr fast drei Jahrzehnten, wie durch den Einsatz von IT verteilte Gruppenarbeit in ihren verschiedensten Ausprägungen unterstützt werden kann. Mit zunehmender Leistungsfähigkeit von Technologien mit Fokus auf Augmented Reality (AR) sowie Virtual Reality (VR) sind neue Möglichkeiten hinzugekommen, die ein hohes Potential zur Unterstützung verteilter Meetings bieten. In diesem Paper stellen wir einen Ansatz vor, der durch die Kombination von AR und VR ein Kommunikationssystem mit verschiedenen Kollaborationsmöglichkeiten zur geeigneten Unterstützung verteilter Meetings umsetzt und durch den Einsatz von Consumer-Hardware auch für die Arbeit von zu Hause geeignet ist. Der Mehrwert des Ansatzes liegt vor allem darin, dass auch solche Szenarien fokussiert werden, bei denen sich zwei oder mehr Personen in demselben Raum befinden sowie ein oder mehrere Personen nicht anwesend sind und entfernt zur selben Zeit kooperieren.

Vocational education and training measures in the field of chemistry are characterized by a close integration of theory and practice. With the changes of the occupational profile „chemical operator“ new technologies, like Augmented Reality, become an integral part the national training plan. This requires skilled VET trainers to use Augmented Reality in theoretical and practical training environments, respective in the classroom and in the chemical plant. Based on a survey among VET trainers and managers a blended learning training program is developed, to enable VET trainers to enrich existing lessons by the use Augmented Reality.