BATTLESHIP: A CASE STUDY OF THE AUGMENTED REALITY USER EXPERIENCE

Problem

Emerging technologies, such as augmented reality, are growing in popularity and accessibility at a fast pace. Developers are building more and more games and applications with this technology, but what are the best practices are for creating a good user experience? What features exclusive to augmented reality are the most enjoyable for players?

Solution

Four versions of an augmented reality battleship game were built. Then playtesting was conducted to gauge users’ reactions to the AR features built into the different versions of the game. We found that movement around the augmented space and feedback from the virtual content were critical aspects in creating a good user experience in augmented reality.

EXECUTION

Researched augmented reality platforms and their capabilities to determine what would work best for my teams’ skills, our timeline, and our goal
Developed the game in Unity with my team to showcase three augmented reality features - virtual content scale, indirect selection, and virtual buttons
Conducted playtesting on our game to determine the best practices for user experience in AR

A workflow of how players of AR Battleship will move through the game

The first version of the game used separate unity scenes to define where in the game progress the player was interacting with.

Player Needs

As a player, I need to place my ships on the board
As a player, I need to shoot at my opponent’s ships on the board
As a player, I need to understand when the computer/opponent is taking a turn

A player workflow of how the player would select different versions of the game and move through the game

After initial playtests we found that players were not as engaged with the game when waiting for the scenes to transition so we used an animation to move between the player and computer playing the game.

Challenges

Restructuring the transition between player and computer turns broke the previous version of the game we had built
Players were less likely to move around the AR space if all of their interactions were using the phone’s touchscreen
Not many willing playtesters to get feedback on the progress and features we had made

COnclusion

I am incredibly proud of the work my team did in creating this game. I learned so much not just about developing an enjoyable game but also how to efficiently apply the augmented reality features we introduced in this project. We were successful in developing a fun AR version of battleship but missed places to enhance the overall player experience. If we were to continue this project in the future, adding haptic feedback and more HUD alerts would let the user feel more immersed in the game. The haptic feedback would allow players to feel more excitement when destroying an enemy ship and more stressed when one of their own ships is destroyed. The HUD alerts would hint at the player to move around the AR space and get the most out of the augmented reality features.