So, an important consideration in AR is *safety*. What do I mean by 'safety'? I mean *physical safety* – falling, tripping, crashing or endangering others. I'm also meaning *social safety*. So, data sharing, stalking, bullying – anything that could endanger someone socially. When we think about AR engagement and immersion and keeping someone's attention,
we have to think about safety because there are limits to how much immersion or attention stealing we can take. And it really comes down to managing *task load*. So, how much can you take away from someone's attention while they're performing a task? Because they've got the physical environment to deal with and the social environment as well. So, outside of the data issues of the system leaking information like that,
let's talk about how you as a designer can prevent that. Adidas was exploring a virtual try-on mirror. And they decided that there were many, many safety concerns with scanning a person's body size, keeping that record on a server or potentially sharing it with other people, and the violation that that might have to that person's identity. And they didn't want
to create that feeling. They just wanted to use it as a sizing guide. And it kind of gives you a moment to pause and ask with your design, are you designing for safety? It's really about *reducing harm*. And I think about this as having, there's a *physical body* that you need to protect. That's so you don't fall into things, stub your toe or hurt your face or your head if you're walking into a wall, for example.
There's also the *social body* – you know – your identity, the way you express yourself. And finally, an *emotional body* or your feelings and the way that you express your feelings with AR, for example. And so, how we're portrayed or how our identity is used and how we feel are the things we're protecting. When we talk about safety as well, we're also talking about *inclusion*.
And making sure that we've included folks from underrepresented communities. And this includes folks with disabilities. And so, the main disabilities that we should be thinking about with AR inclusion are: blind, low vision, mobility impairments, deaf, hard of hearing and cognitive or neurodiversity as well. So, these are important areas to be careful of in terms of design.
But there are also opportunities to *innovate and create more interesting AR experiences*. And one of my favorite examples is the Hololens for blind users. And what it does is it uses the technology of sonification to detect objects because sound can detect objects, the density of an object, and it can be used just like a cane can be used to detect objects in space.
And this is an example from a bus stop detection. So, the problem is blind users don't know where bus stops are. And in this case Hololens is being used as a way to give blind users *audible cues* about where bus stops are as they walk out in their neighborhoods.