Architectural User Interface: Synthesizing Augmented Reality and Architecture

Design methods and digital/spatial environments that combine augmented reality (AR) and architecture are presented, with particular focus on synthesizing a novel design process. The architectural brief is an archeological museum/excavation site that directly confronts issues of occupation, circulation, form, and large archives of data. Combining the efforts of twelve architectural designers with a team of AR developers, a taxonomy is developed of affordances, feedback mechanisms, and output/display options. This taxonomy constitutes preliminary usability heuristics for an architectural user interface synthesizing AR and architecture.