AR for All – Is this Democratization of Spatial Design?

Abstract

Augmented reality is hailed in published discourse for its potential to democratise spatial authorship. It offers the possibility for people to participate in spatial design activity without requiring any specialised skills. Everyone has ideas about the built environment, but conveying 3D information has conventionally relied either on scaled down models or 2D representations, in turn requiring extensive education and training to master. This convention has precluded anyone from participating in decision-making who did not have access to such skills. Augmented reality, or AR, offers communication of 3D ideas directly through 3D visualisations on handheld devices, thus re-kindling the dream of all citizens to have equal access to spatial decision-making. For this vision to turn into reality however, the technology will have to become more prolific than sketching. This paper seeks to encourage more and more people into playing with AR and identifying ways to ease the use of the technology. It aims to promote experimentation with AR by sharing a basic level protocol for setting up a customised operation, along with brief descriptions of two key caveats: accuracy and reliability. Overall it seems that AR is as yet predominantly geared towards gaming, and therefore requires some tweaking for use as a spatial design tool. Experimenting with it though has certainly become accessible for all.