SpeculAR: An In-the-wild Exploration of Users’ Perceptions of a Social Augmented Reality
Mihael Gajic, Flurin Selm, Adrian Preussner, Florian Mathis · 2025
While head-mounted augmented reality (AR) glasses are becoming increasingly reliable and relevant for public scenarios, little is known about users’ preferences and perceptions when experiencing AR in social spaces. In this late-breaking work, we investigate users’ perceptions of augmented social environments tailored to their shared interests. Through interviews with 64 participants, we first identified 12 key usage scenarios, which informed the development of SpeculAR, a prototype for an augmented social reality. We then conducted an in-the-wild study with 18 participants to assess their experiences with SpeculAR. Our findings reveal that shared AR scenarios are generally perceived positively and can be seamlessly integrated into real-world environments to augment and further enhance real-world spaces. Our exploration of augmented social spaces highlights important considerations and lays the groundwork for future studies and the realizations of augmented reality applications in everyday lives.