The effect of paper-based manual and stereoscopic-based mobile augmented reality systems on knowledge retention

Abstract

Augmented reality technology is attracting increased attention, given the popularity of the smartphone. The utilisation of the smartphone with AR technology is also enabling mobile augmented reality (MAR) to become accessible. Stereoscopic vision offers users the benefit of depth perception, which can help improve user memory. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the effect on knowledge retention using MAR with stereoscopic vision. An experiment to compare a stereoscopic-based MAR application and a paper-based manual was designed to test the participants’ knowledge retention on a product part and disassembly process. The developed MAR adopted a smartphone and headset case to provide a stereoscopic view to the user. The experiment consisted of both pre-test and post-test phases where the pre-test phase examined the participant’s knowledge about the product, and the post-test phase focused on how much information the participants could recall. The post-test phase was conducted after 48 h following the pre-test phase since long-term memory required several hours in which to stabilise. The results showed that the MAR group had an advantage over the paper-based manual group for both information retentions having a mean score of 8.89 from the MAR group, compared with 6.33 for the paper-based manual group. Moreover, the MAR group was observed to have fewer errors in the post-test with a mean score of 0.53, whereas the paper-based achieved a score of 2.2. This result indicated that the MAR group and the paper-based manual group had equivalent performance in the completion time without the assistance tool. In addition, MAR had a better mean score for the subjective feedback (usefulness = 4.47, ease of use 4.18 and satisfaction = 4.07).