Ambika Shahu, Sonja Dorfbauer, Philipp Wintersberger & Florian Michahelles won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for their research Project “Skillab” at the INTERACT 2023, the 19th International Conference of Human-Computer Interaction of IFIP (International Federation for Information Processing) from August 28 to September 1, 2023 in York, UK.

Their paper “Skillab – A multimodal augmented reality environment for learning manual tasks” shows how Augmented Reality (AR) can support learning manual skills. Their tool “Skillab” is a novel AR-based scaffolding system, which teaches manual skills in an immersive digital environment by giving feedback, such as muscle actuation. Their user study showed that Skillab was more effective in terms of performance, learnability, and user experience than traditional paper instructions. The results suggest that AR tools like Skillab could be a promising avenue for skill-building education, offering a more effective and engaging learning experience than conventional methods.

Abstract

The paper investigates the usage of AR-based systems in teaching manual skills. We propose Skillab, a novel AR-based scaffolding system. It aids in the learning of manual work and functions as a multimodal immersive tool for feedback, including muscle actuation. As our initial investigation, we made a floor lamination tutorial. We evaluated our system’s performance and user experience in comparison to traditional paper instructions. With 20 participants, we conducted a between-group user study and obtained both qualitative and quantitative data. In terms of task performance, learnability, and overall user experience, Skillab significantly outperformed conventional paper instructions. In contrast to learning from paper instructions, Skillab training demonstrated a significant improvement in the systematic rating on the quality of the performed task. We believe that by demonstrating the potential of immersive multi-modal feedback technology for skill-building, researchers would be motivated to explore this area further.

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