Usability guidelines for designing a marker-based augmented reality application for teaching sciences subject at primary schools in Malaysia

Abstract

At primary level, students have difficulty in learning science as it involves understanding and visualizing complex abstract concepts. Meanwhile, the emerging of Augmented Reality (AR) in this era may benefit the effectiveness and efficiency of learning process. However, the usability issues, development and implementation complexities still remain puzzled. Besides, research around how AR should be designed and applied in order to improve the learning process is still lacking. Hence, the purpose of this research was to identify usability problems of using AR application for learning Science subject among primary school students and to propose guidelines for designing the respective AR application. A mixed methodology was used in the research including quasi-experimental design for AR application evaluation, followed by observation and questionnaires for understanding participants’ interaction with selected AR applications. Five primary school students in Year 4, 5 and 6 that have learned solar system topic in science subject were involved. The results revealed that there were three areas of usability issues in AR applications which were; 1) difficulty to understand buttons and icons in interface design, 2) tracking loss in interaction design, and 3) no in-app tutorial for first time users in content design. Since only marker-based AR applications were conducted in this study, the guidelines were only for marker-based AR application. Therefore, it is proposed that the design of intuitive buttons and simple icons should be made easy to understand for children, while the usage of markers should be reduced for more convenient experience and avoiding tracking loss. Plus, a user-friendly tutorial with appropriate visual representations should be added. Findings of this research will contribute towards understanding of the challenges in the usage of marker-based Science AR application for primary school students and further propose guidelines to design the respective marker-based AR application more efficiently and effectively.