"Because we are human, we use hands": Understanding People's Expectations and Mental Models of Virtual Object Interaction in AR Headsets
Alejandro Delgado, Hetvi Shah, Md Mehedi Hasan Jibon, Anzhelika Kurnikova, Fareeza Rahman, Julia Woodward · 2025
Augmented reality (AR) headsets are increasingly being used by people in a range of contexts.However, there are still open research questions on how people expect to interact with virtual objects in AR headsets, which limits our ability to design intuitive applications.We conducted an unconstrained elicitation study with 30 adults, in which participants showed how they would interact with a virtual cube in an AR headset.We did not constrain participants to a specific interaction technique (e.g., gestures vs. speech) and asked them open-ended questions to better understand their reasoning.For this paper, we focus on understanding the participants' expectations and mental models.Participants based their interactions on pop-culture, real-world experiences, and expected an immersive physically-engaging environment that follows the laws of physics.Our work contributes a deeper understanding of people's perceptions and expectations of interacting with AR headsets.We provide recommendations for designing future AR headset experiences.