Augmented reality and digital genre design — Situated simulations on the iPhone

In digital media - including augmented reality research - rapid change continue to take place at the levels of hardware and software. This paper focus on a third layer in a hierarchy of digital media - meaningware. Meaningware is the domain of digital textuality, its genres and conventions - all key subject matters of the humanities. To prevent cultural lag at the textual level the conduct of genre design is suggested as a methodological approach. The potential 'genre' experimented with here is a type of augmented reality system we have named Situated Simulations. The system takes advantage of the convergence of mobility, broadband, rich graphics capabilities and positioning/orientation technologies, on off the shelf mobile phones. The current platform applied is Apple's iPhone. The paper describes the development of three prototyped situated simulations designed for use in both learning and tourism. Interface and design issues are discussed, and a perspective on the epistemological increment of augmented reality and situated simulations is related to Bateson's notion of double descriptions.