Comparative Analysis of AR, VR, and Desktop Tools for Prototyping Augmented Reality Services

Augmented Reality (AR) offers new opportunities for interacting with our surroundings. However, creating AR services for specific environments such as homes, factories, or buildings remains challenging for users without development skills, as it involves complex 3D editors and advanced coding workflows. This paper presents a comparative study of three distinct tools, dedicated to such novice users, for prototyping augmented reality AR services. These tools include desktop, Virtual Reality (VR), and AR editors, focusing on the positioning of AR assets. In a between-subjects design experiment, where each user tested only one editor, we used two scenarios (smart-home and smart-building) to assess performance, usability, induced workload, and global user experience for each tool. Additionally, the two scenarios allowed us to examine the impact of the target environment size on the results, with a fivefold difference between the sizes of the two environments tested. Our observations indicate that the AR and VR tools outperformed the desktop editor in several criteria, such as task completion duration, usability and enjoyment, suggesting they not only provide a viable alternative to desktop editors for novice users but could also be prioritized. The differences induced by the scenario and environment size were minimal, suggesting their low impact. Future studies should explore this further with larger differences in environment size.