PolySocial Reality : Prospects for Extending User Capabilities Beyond Mixed , Dual and Blended Reality

The technology industry has evolved over the years with a development lens increasingly focused on end users and usage cases. Indeed, for the past decade or more, personas (the designer-created profiles of end users) have become stand-ins for various usage cases and user models. With regard to location aware software and mobile applications, the usage of Dual Reality and Mixed Reality as metaphors have functioned in a similar vein. Just as personas are not people, Mixed and Dual Reality do not fully represent or address the complex usage cases developing as more people do more things, with more software at more times and in more spaces than ever before. This new complex application ecosystem presents greater opportunities and challenges for application design. We discuss ways that developers can use PolySocial Reality (PoSR) to represent a more complete complex structural model of individuals interacting within multiple environments.