General considerations

In the design process of narrative AAR experiences, a number of considerations can be taken into account, such as:

  • What is the experience's relationship to the real environment and reality?
    • As an example, using Azuma’s three approaches to AR storytelling:
      • Reinforcing (selecting an environment that is compelling itself)
      • Reskinning (remaking reality to suit the story)
      • Remembering (retelling memories at their places)1)
    • Site-specific or universal/transferable?
      • If transferable, how to avoid contextual connections with the environment being just arbitrary and user-dependent?
    • Experience based on map vs. reacting to surrounding cues and objects2)
    • 'Absolute location-based' vs. 'relative location-based'3)
  • How to compromise between 1) narrative engagement and interaction and 2) suspension of disbelief through compelling acoustic virtual reality?4)
  • How much the user should be guided during the experience ('holding hand')?
  • How to maintain intelligibility in noisy environments5) or cope with unpredictable sounds?
  • Should the sounds be distinguishable from the real-world sounds6) or seamlessly blend with the reality?
  • How can sound be utilised as providing time for static surroundings?7)
  • Real acoustics vs. unreal acoustics
  • Role of speech vs. sound effects
  • Use of first-person sounds
  • Use of attractor sounds 8)
1)
Azuma, Ronald. Location-Based Mixed and Augmented Reality Storytelling, 2nd Edition of Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality, edited by Barfield Woodword, 259–76, CRC Press, 2015
2)
Rodkin, Richard, and Dafna Naphtali. Audio Augmented Reality for Interactive Soundwalks, Sound Art and Music Delivery, Foundations in Sound Design for Interactive Media, Routledge, 2019
3)
https://audioar.org/glossary/
4)
Cliffe, Laurence. Audio Augmented Objects and the Audio Augmented Reality Experience, Thesis (University of Nottingham), University of Nottingham, 2022 https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/69795/
5)
Schütze, Stephan, and Anna Irwin-Schütze. New Realities in Audio: A Practical Guide for VR, AR, MR and 360 Video, CRC Press, 2018 https://www.routledge.com/New-Realities-in-Audio-A-Practical-Guide-for-VR-AR-MR-and-360-Video/Schutze-Irwin-Schutze/p/book/9781138740815
6)
Dam, Abhraneil, Arsh Siddiqui, Charles Leclerq, and Myounghoon Jeon. Extracting a Definition and Taxonomy for Audio Augmented Reality (AAR) Using Grounded Theory, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting 66, no. 1 (2022): 1220–24 https://doi.org/10.1177/1071181322661434
7)
Chion, Michel. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, Second Edition, Columbia University Press, 2019
8)
Zimmermann, A. and Lorenz, A. LISTEN: a user-adaptive audio-augmented museum guide, User Model User-Adap Inter 18, 389–416 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11257-008-9049-x