How to shoot yourself right with a smartphone?

Abstract

This article presents a new use case of using handheld augmented reality to set up a smartphone camera for taking a self-photograph needed for evaluating the user’s sports exercise. The problem addressed is that of settings up the rear smartphone camera so that users can take photographs of themselves performing sports poses without the need for assistance from another person. The proposed solution uses an augmented reality avatar with the same body properties as the user, which is placed into the scene so that the user can set up the camera to best capture the avatar. We also propose a straightforward mode of interaction for placing the avatar into the scene and setting up the camera for the desired purpose. We conducted a user study to explore the usability and user experience of the proposed solution. The results showed that the augmented reality visual aids, especially the avatar, enhanced the effectiveness of taking the self-photograph and that users perceived augmented reality elements favorably.