Guiding Smombies: Augmenting Peripheral Vision with Low-Cost Glasses to Shift the Attention of Smartphone Users

Over the past few years, playing Augmented Reality (AR) games on smartphones has steadily been gaining in popularity (e.g., Pokémon Go). However, playing these games while navigating traffic is highly dangerous and has led to many accidents in the past. In our work, we aim to augment peripheral vision of pedestrians with low-cost glasses to support them in critical traffic encounters. Therefore, we developed a 10-fi prototype with peripheral displays. We technically improved the prototype with the experience of five usability experts. Afterwards, we conducted an experiment on a treadmill to evaluate the effectiveness of collision warnings in our prototype. During the experiment, we compared three different light stimuli (instant, pulsing and moving) with regard to response time, error rate, and subjective feedback. Overall, we could show that all light stimuli were suitable for shifting the users' attention (100% correct). However, moving light resulted in significantly faster response times and was subjectively perceived best.