Smart Authoring for Location-based Augmented Reality Storytelling Applications

Abstract

SPIRIT has been an applied research project that developed a location-based Augmented Reality prototype for outdoor museums. It uses the sensors of mobile consumer appliances to provide a variety of contexts for the delivery of adaptive and interactive stories. This paper addresses the technical authoring process to develop new non-linear story content for the app. We propose smart authoring tools to assist non-programmers. Based on requirements for authoring that we identified from issues in our first production, we describe the smart authoring tools MockAR, StoryPlaceAR, StoryStructAR and VideoTestAR. Preliminary evaluation observations support our hypothesis that these tools simplify the authoring process, in order to support museum curators and media designers during the creation of mobile experiences adapted to contextual situations.