AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON DESIGNERS' PERCEPTIONS OF AUGMENTED REALITY WITHIN AN ARCHITECTURAL FIRM

Nowadays the design sector takes account of collaboration among design team members as seriously as the geometric and spatial features of the design itself. Effective collaboration should appreciate the difference in perceptions between design practitioners. Productivity in design heavily depends on how effectively design ideas can be communicated to other design team members. Augmented Reality (AR) technology, which can insert digital information into the designers' physical working environment, is envisaged to be a promising solution to the collaboration problem faced by design practitioners. Rather than focusing on Augmented Reality system development and application, the work presented in this paper is more focused on the strategic and organizational issues of Augmented Reality and it's role in the existing design sector. Specifically, this paper presents an analytical framework to identify and investigate potential issues of facilitating Augmented Reality technology transfer into the existing visual practices in design firms. Based on this analytical framework, this paper also implemented an empirical pilot study on the perceptions of using Augmented Reality technology for architectural design activity. The interviewees for this study were invited from a well-recognized Australian architecture company. The paper also presents the findings with a discussion of the application of AR technology in the design sector to achieve higher design efficiency.