Virtuality or Physicality? Supporting Memorization Through Augmented Reality Gamification

Augmented reality (AR) is evolving to become a pervasive tool for interacting with virtual objects. We conducted a comparative study to explore the impact of virtuality and physicality in supporting human memorization through gamification. A head-mounted display (HMD) AR memory matching game and a corresponding physical version game with paper boards were harnessed. The proof-of-concept version was demonstrated in an initial user study (n=12) with counterbalancing design to determine that our proposed gamified HMD AR system with virtuality could support better human memorization compared to the physical version game in reducing task time, improving usability, becoming more recommendable, and decreasing cognitive task workload. The study was then followed by quantitative analysis of the respective four metrics: game completion time (GCT), system usability scale (SUS), recommendation level, and NASA task load index (TLX). A brief qualitative analysis is presented. The results show that in our case, the virtuality outperformed the physicality in supporting human memorization in a gamified context through HMD AR in an evident range.