Augmented reality technology is increasingly being used in tour applications to enhance the travel experience for tourists. These applications have been deployed for systems used in museums, navigation, and university campus tours. Making an augmented reality application available to university campus visitors can provide a beneficial tool to attract and recruit new students. Over the past two decades augmented reality applications have been deployed for use at World Heritage sites, museums, and hiking trails, and commonly use either location-based or marker-based methods to present users with descriptive information of points of interest. Hawk AR-T is a cross-platform application to improve the current virtual campus tour, provided by the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and provide an immersive and memorable experience using augmented reality while delivering information on the university’s culture, programs offered, and amenities to its users. This proposed system uses a modified model-view-controller design pattern, developed in the Unity gaming engine, and implements both location- based and marker-based methods for content delivery. Upon completion of development, 36 participants used two applications and provided feedback on their experience. Results of the user testing were used for the comparison of the current virtual tour and the proposed system. User testing resulted in a markable difference between the two applications, with more consistent scores for Hawk AR-T among the participants. Based on this evidence, Hawk AR-T is considered as an appropriate replacement for the current virtual tour.

Recommended Citation: Davison A., Pence T., Cummings J., Layman L., (2023). HAWKAR-T: Enhancing the University Tour Experience With Augmented Reality. UNCW MS CSIS Proceedings. V. 17 , N. 14 .