Extending the World-in-Miniature Metaphor to Access Situated Information in a Pervasive Augmented Reality Environment

Recently, the concept of Pervasive Augmented Reality (PAR) was introduced. It is defined as a continuous use of Augmented Reality (AR), where the information displayed comes from applications simultaneously opened by the user or from situated and embedded information placed by various sources. This can lead to potential information clutter. Additionally, PAR environments apply physical constraints over users due to the nature of their displayed information, forcing users to walk to get to situated or embedded information in the environment if they want more details. This work explores the use of the World-in-Miniature (WiM) metaphor inside a PAR context and extends this technique to better fit the constraints implied by such a context: 1) search and filter information of use wherever it might be, 2) access potentially distant and/or occluded information without any required physical movement, and 3) keep context of distant and situated information. Our contributions are an extension to the WiM metaphor and the evaluation of a fully working prototype through the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ) with results coming from 26 participants.