“Think of Augmented Reality as half virtual and half real. It takes existing physical spaces and supplements or “augments” them with information, objects, actions or interactions.”
Some applications include:
Location based Restaurant finder with reviews
Location based Travel points of interest
Virtual pet for the iPhone
Public transportation schedule and station finder
Virtual objects you can interact with in the real world
Talking about usability and consumer products. Creativecloseup.com published this collection of 15 great designs that, as they say, for several reasons may never reach the production stage, but may set a trend and definitely make us whish they really existed.
Smashing Magazine published a few months ago an interesting list of usability nightmares that you should be aware of:
Hidden log-in link One of the most used links (if not the most) should be always placed in a relevant and visible position.
Pop-ups for content presentation
It is really not a good idea to open a pop-up window to show the content, at the end, browsers nowadays block automatically that kind of javascripts and so you’re forced to use the famous “if the window has not opened click here”.
Dragging instead of vertical navigation
There are some flash enthusiast that keep going under the idea that the user has to “discover” the way a site must be used. The dragging technique claims to break the scrolling paradigm and let users interact with the page dragging it instead of scrolling. This might become a new trend in the future but for now it should be kept only for showcases or demonstrations about flash capabilities.
Invisible links It is not wise to hide links under a ton of images, links should be visible and clear.
Visual noise Adding too many graphical elements can turn the website into a real chaos. Keep in mind that white spaces must prevail. Always.
For next five nightmares read Smashing Magazine, and remember, “the shiny surface wins awards, real substance wins costumers”
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