Using the Concept of Augmented Reality as a Vehicle for Transcending the Desktop Tarpit

Dealing with design for mobile technology has to reflect the fact that mobile devices such as palmtop computers are technologies in their own right and not merely personal computers with a very small screen. Established concepts in desktop computing generally do not scale to interaction with small mobile interfaces and trying to use them indiscriminately of the fact that these interface paradigms were in fact developed for a different technology with very different properties will very likely result in design that does not take advantage of the possibilities of in the mobile device/technology. In particular, the concept of direct manipulation that historically has served as the main vehicle for understanding the graphical workstation seems problematic due to the tight coupling to the desktop metaphor, the workstation concept, and a strong focus on information access. Using the concept of augmented reality principles, which deals primarily with categorising the placement of the interface into three categories, we have explored novel interface principles for ‘babyfaces’ or small devices.