User Experience in Augmented Reality: A Holistic Evaluation of a Prototype for Assembly Instructions

Industries are under development with new upcoming tools that will further streamline the work of operators, not least in assembly. Assembly instructions are usually visualized by traditional paper or data bases. A new way of showing instruction is provided by augmented reality (AR). The focus of this paper is the user experience (UX) of AR based instructions for assembly. In order to study the UX in AR an evaluation matrix and an AR prototype has been developed and evaluated in a UX test, where data regarding both hedonic and pragmatic qualities was collected. The UX test yielded a result of three out of nine sub-goals completed while six did not. There was a general low degree of cognitive load while assembling but not low enough. However, there are promising results for AR based instructions, though the technology still needs improvement and more testing is also necessary. The assembly scenario for this study was somewhat simple and could be one reason why this study generated ambiguous results.