Flicker Augmentations: Rapid Brightness Modulation for Real-World Visual Guidance using Augmented Reality

Providing attention guidance, such as assisting in search tasks, is a prominent use for Augmented Reality. Typically, this is achieved by graphically overlaying geometrical shapes such as arrows. However, providing visual guidance can cause side effects such as attention tunnelling or scene occlusions, and introduce additional visual clutter. Alternatively, visual guidance can adjust saliency but this comes with different challenges such as hardware requirements and environment dependent parameters. In this work we advocate for using flicker as an alternative for real-world guidance using Augmented Reality. We provide evidence for the effectiveness of flicker from two user studies. The first compared flicker against alternative approaches in a highly controlled setting, demonstrating efficacy (N = 28). The second investigated flicker in a practical task, demonstrating feasibility with higher ecological validity (N = 20). Finally, our discussion highlights the opportunities and challenges when using flicker to provide real-world visual guidance using Augmented Reality.