Current Practices, Challenges, and Design Implications for Collaborative AR/VR Application Development

Title of the Paper

Practices, Challenges, and Design Insights for Current Collaborative AR/VR Application Development

Bibliographic Information

• Subject Area: Collaborative development and tool design in the field of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR)
• Keywords: Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, AR/VR, creative tools, collaborative design, prototyping, design challenges, interdisciplinary teams, user experience design

Research Background and Issues

• Identified Problems:
  1. AR/VR technology is still in a phase of rapid development, with highly fragmented hardware and software ecosystems.
  2. Interdisciplinary collaborative teams with diverse backgrounds and skills face challenges in dealing with incompatible tools and methods.
  3. The lack of design standards and universal toolchains complicates collaboration and development work.
  4. From both scientific literature and practical perspectives, AR/VR is still regarded as "emerging technology," creating adoption barriers for both professional developers and non-technical creators (e.g., artists).
• Significance of the Research:
  AR/VR technology is gaining increasing market attention, with applications spanning gaming, education, architecture, healthcare, and more. However, there is limited understanding of how professional practitioners (as opposed to individual developers with low technical backgrounds) collaborate, use tools, and overcome obstacles in complex development processes.
• Research Motivation and Related Work:
  1. Previous research has focused on lowering the barriers for non-technical users in AR/VR creation (e.g., providing tools that require no programming), but there is little understanding of the actual collaborative processes of professional teams.
  2. Existing studies (e.g., Ashtari et al.) have identified obstacles faced by low-tech developers, but the challenges encountered by professional teams remain underexplored.

Proposed Solution

• Research Methodology:
  Conducted semi-structured interviews with 26 professional AR/VR designers and developers from around the world to explore their tasks, tool usage, collaboration methods, and encountered challenges.
• Innovative Contributions:
  1. Summarized the roles and task divisions in professional AR/VR development.
  2. Identified and analyzed challenges in collaborative development and proposed solutions.
  3. Suggested future directions for tool design to support more efficient collaboration and development.
• Implementation Steps:
  1. Conduct interviews with the target group, exploring needs, task distribution, tool usage difficulties, and current mitigation strategies.
  2. Use open coding for qualitative analysis to extract key issues and findings.
  3. Translate the research results into specific design insights for future development tools.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Findings:
  1. Defined four core roles in collaborative development:
     • Concept Developer: Responsible for initial ideation and sketching, focusing on user needs and scenario analysis.
     • Interaction Designer: Designs operational logic, navigation, input/output, and multimodal interactions.
     • Content Creator: Focuses on creating 3D models, animations, color schemes, sound, and other content.
     • Technical Developer: Handles code implementation, hardware selection, and technical feasibility evaluation.
  2. Identified and analyzed three major challenges:
     • Misunderstanding of the medium: For example, overly high expectations of hardware performance and lack of awareness of device limitations.
     • Lack of tool support: Including insufficient tools for designing and testing 3D spatial behaviors and difficulties in achieving seamless workflows.
     • Absence of a common language: Interdisciplinary teams lack a shared design context and standardized models, leading to communication difficulties.
  3. Explored prototypes, tools, and methods used in professional settings, including innovative solutions such as Gray Boxing and physical prototyping.
• Comparison with Existing Solutions:
  1. Focused on professional perspectives, addressing a research gap that previously emphasized low-tech user groups.
  2. Provided practical suggestions for addressing the complexity of collaboration and challenges in interdisciplinary communication.
• Experimental or Evaluation Results:
  1. Highlighted the critical role of tools and prototypes in communication and decision-making.
  2. Summarized common mitigation strategies in teams, such as collaborative coding, role-playing, and physical modeling.
• Limitations and Future Directions:
  • Limitations:
    1. Participants primarily used Unity, which may bias the data toward this tool.
    2. The study focused on professional teams, with limited exploration of applicability to non-technical developers.
  • Future Directions:
    1. Promote the establishment of standardized toolchains and a universal language for AR/VR development.
    2. Identify the needs of interdisciplinary teams and design more suitable tools and platforms.
    3. Apply Participatory Design to AR/VR tool development to support users with varying roles and skill levels.