Future directions for mobile augmented reality research: Understanding relationships between augmented reality users, nonusers, content, devices, and industry

Abstract

As the field of mobile media studies continues to grow, researchers are focusing on new developments and trends in mobile technologies. One of these areas that has been garnering interest is mobile augmented reality (AR) technologies. While much of the earliest research in AR was primarily focused on answering computer science and engineering related questions, social science and humanities scholars have started taking note of AR as perhaps the next major development in mobile media. Given that much of this research has been distributed across interdisciplinary lines and from many different theoretical perspectives, this piece identifies some early lines of media, communication, and social science research into AR and identifies key themes and areas of focus: AR users/nonusers, AR devices, AR content, and AR industry. By organizing these lines of research, this manuscript serves as a call for specific future areas of research, suggests new approaches that researchers could take to explore interrelationships between these areas, and advocates for the necessity of research that examines different levels (micro/meso/macro) of analysis within AR. The goal of this piece is to advance a framework that informs and motivates mobile scholars to consider and integrate AR into their research areas, at a moment where it is in the process of moving from science fiction to material reality, from blueprint to prototype, and from laboratory to homes, cars, workplaces, and pockets.