Augmented reality: mostly lame

22 Feb 2010

One of the first map design lessons we were taught way back in Cartography 201 was design in enough information for the user to complete the task, ideally nothing more, definitely nothing less. Hardly revolutionary stuff here but a concept still very much missing in the current crop of augmented reality apps that tend to obscure instead of inform:

There's a post office somewhere through all those buildings

The Layar post office search above shows three post offices all within 500 meters of my current location. There is no indication of what obstacles may exist or what street I should head down and it's not until you switch out of reality to map view that I discover getting to the two post offices behind me involves crossing a major road (yellow) and a junior high school is between me and the post office in front:

That's clearer

Augmented reality has potential but Layar and other mobile AR apps will remain little more than gimmicks that fail the user in any built-up environment until they start augmenting information of value to the user.