Use Cases

On the project's Web page there is a description of t he current status and a future scenario. It reads "Imagine:


 * we live in a world with devices with or connected to unlimited processing power, network resources and sensors,


 * that AR experience developers have been busy encoding augmentations with valuable interactions but have no longer any need to attach a Call to Action, and


 * that automatic systems have been deployed on mobile devices and in networks, rendering the manual experience authoring processes of 2014 unnecessary for the vast majority of assets and real world objects.

Unlike in 2014, experiences are not discreet (isolated to one or few targets) but rather can be the continuous integration of more than one information source. In fact, the digital assets available for viewing in synchrony with a user’s focus of interest are supplied by multiple data publishers and fused together to enrich the user’s daily life.

In a target-rich environment, the user’s system is continually comparing the context with databases of digital assets in a manner that is analogous to that which navigation services of 2014 use. Provided the user has not requested to filter experiences for attributes, the user context will be continually monitored. Regardless the point of interest density, digital information (in navigation systems, the route) will appear.

In the future, users’ experiences of their world could be composed of digital assets presented as needed, in context and from multiple sources into a single experience."

This page is the point from which you can visit Wiki pages dedicated to each of the use cases within the framework suggested in the Architecture Overview page.

End User Use Cases

 * Ad Hoc Query
 * Experience Subscription
 * Experience Tour
 * Automated Experience Discovery
 * Banksy Fan
 * Greenhouse Glasses

Experience Provider Use Cases

 * Big Box Retail Push
 * Experience Catalog
 * Experience Delivery

​Agent/Broker Use Cases

 * Distributed Experience Search
 * Manage User Profile
 * Experience Delivery
 * Recommendation creation

Notes of the Sept 15 meeting
During the Sept 15 conference call we discussed two of the newly introduced use cases (Banksy Fan, Greenhouse Glasses).

These are very clearly use cases for mobile AR. They are perfectly doable with today's platforms and APIs. The AR Experience publisher only needs to select a platform, develop the experience, publish it and it will appear in a listing when the user selects to search nearby experiences from the browser's AR catalog. Yes! It would be nice (great) to have these experiences developed once and delivered to any standards-compliant player, without the user compromising the experience quality when choosing their prefered user agent/AR player, hence we want there to be open and interoperable AR.

Christine expressed strong concerns that  these use cases are too narrow to be good examples of when AR Discovery is needed/desirable. Afterall, if those (Joe, the fan included) who want to follow Banksy want to see additional art in AR view when looking at a Banksy mural, that is a single publisher "channel" or layar. Banksy (one) to many (fans).

If Banksy wants to see AR experiences by artists in his vicinity, and if there are many, then the artists may need to register their experiences in a catalog which Banksy could access through a delivery service.

Bill took the action item to expand this use case to be more general.

We also discussed the Greenhouse Glasses use case. Once again, this is a fine mobile AR use case and it could be a use of AR discovery if there were hundreds of experiences that were available for the user at any given place or when in a commercial venue, etc. The discussion about this use case focused on the potential role (or not) of the data providers.

If there are live sensors and calculators out there with observations accessible through an API, the AR experience developers could interface with the data sets (with or without policies, such as payments) and these would be processed and represented in AR view (high Ozone --> biggger circle, high Carbon Footprint --> bigger footprint graphic?). Nevertheless, the point of AR Discovery is not to describe the API the data provider has exposed or the way the data is fed to the user agent (AR-assisted client).

AR discovery addresses only the need for the experiences to be found/discovered automatically regardless of how many publishers are using the same data sets or the same POI.

Steve expressed concern about the reference to a business model in the Banksy Fan use case. It was discussed and the participants agreed that until we have the components defined and the software interfaces described, there is low need for (or benefit from) mentioning the business models between the AR developer, the end user and the content sources. In the future it may be interesting to explore and develop business models for AR Discovery but it is too early for that now.

Christine and Steve had a conversation about the level of the use cases. Steve's experience is that use cases work well when you begin with concrete steps in a high level abstract description (without specifics of the content) and then test the engineering solution for the high level problem with specific data or actions.

Christine feels that both the Greenhouse Glasses and the Banksy Fan use cases are possilby very narrow examples of the more generic "Experience Tour" use case.

Bill took the action item to add/refine the use cases for discussion during the next meeting.

Christine put comments on the Big Box Retail use case.