Exploring Distance and Movement as Contextual Factors for Augmented Reality Interaction Design

Spittle, Becky (2025) Exploring Distance and Movement as Contextual Factors for Augmented Reality Interaction Design. Doctoral thesis, Birmingham City University.

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Abstract

As Augmented Reality (AR) technologies edge closer to ubiquity, context-aware interaction becomes essential for creating more seamless and practical interactions across a range of applications and use cases. This prompts research to understand how con-textual factors could be effectively defined and/or inferred by AR devices, and how such information could be harnessed to provide the most suitable interactions in real-time. With this as the core motivation of the thesis, this research explores how we can work towards providing adaptive interactions for AR. By synthesising and building on prior work, the thesis proposes how two proxemic dimensions, Distance and Movement, could be leveraged as contextual factors to facilitate more flexible and personalised AR experiences.

As Proxemics was first proposed as a a theory rooted in social science, and Proxemic Interaction for context awareness in ubiquitous computing applications, where users interact with people, objects and devices in the real world, existing definitions for the spatial considerations they introduce fail to fully encompass the potential of referencing Distance and Movement for interactions with virtual content. To address this gap, and demonstrate the value of leveraging Distance and Movement as contextual factors in AR, two literature reviews and three empirical studies are conducted, highlighting how spatial considerations influence the performance and usability of commonplace AR interaction techniques.

The first literature review (Peripheral-free Interaction in Augmented Reality Environments) presents research on spatial interaction, as well as previous classifications for capturing context in AR, before introducing and exploring commonplace, peripheral-free input techniques offered by the built-in hardware within AR devices. This review provides a foundation for understanding the range of contextual factors that influence AR interactions. The second literature review (Interaction Techniques for Immersive Environments) narrows the scope to explore explicit, peripheral-free interaction. By quantifying and evaluating the application of input modalities across a range of immersive technologies, the review considers the types of displays, input methods, use cases, and tasks addressed in current research, highlighting areas that require further investigation.

Following this, three empirical user studies were conducted. Studies 1 (Impact of Technique on Augmented Reality Interaction) and 2 (Impact of Distance on Augmented Reality Interaction) highlight the appropriateness of freehand and gaze-based interaction methods for completing near-field and far-field selection tasks in seated environments, with Study 3 (User-Defined Locomotion) exploring the spatial positioning and move-ment approaches employed by users with different techniques in a room-scale scenario. These studies provide recommendations for adapting AR interaction techniques based on Distance and Movement.

The findings reveal key insights into user performance, experience, preferences and behaviours, for interactions with virtual content placed across all four proxemic zones (Intimate, Personal, Social and Public). Although prior work has explored proxemic factors for AR interaction, no work has been found to directly consider how Distance and Movement could be referenced as contextual factors for adapting explicit AR input methods, and there are currently no recommendations for designing adaptive AR systems based on this. Results suggest that, by referencing Distance and Movement, AR interfaces could dynamically respond to improve usability in changing interaction scenarios. This thesis therefore begins to explore how proxemic dimensions can provide an approach to adaptive interaction design in AR, guiding future research and development towards more flexible, context-aware AR experiences.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Dates:	Date Event 13 October 2025 Accepted
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Interaction Techniques, Input Modalities, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, Virtual Reality, Extended Reality, Proxemic Interaction, Adaptive, Context, User Experience, Interaction Design, User Study
Subjects:	CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-01 - computer science CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-04 - software engineering CAH11 - computing > CAH11-01 - computing > CAH11-01-08 - others in computing
Divisions:	Architecture, Built Environment, Computing and Engineering > Computer Science Doctoral Research College > Doctoral Theses Collection
Depositing User:	Louise Muldowney
Date Deposited:	13 Apr 2026 09:21
Last Modified:	13 Apr 2026 09:21
URI:	https://www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/id/eprint/16963

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