SmartBuilding: a People-to-People-to-Geographical-Places Mobile System based on Augmented Reality

People-to-People-to-Geographical-Places systems connect places to communities. Generally, these systems require users to perform complex tasks using mobile phones. Thus, the creation of powerful interaction techniques and the design of effective and easy interfaces are key requirements. The system we propose in this paper, named SmartBuilding, is a mobile Augmented Reality system that supports the sharing of contextualized information in indoor environment, depending on the user location. This system shifts the interaction with the user from the classical desktop logical metaphors towards a more natural interaction style based on augmenting and annotating an indoor environment. It combines the world perceived by the phone camera with information concerning the user location and his/her community, enabling users to create several working areas and access to augmented content. SmartBuilding proposes an innovative interface that adopts the mobile device sensors to identify the content to be shown and to control the user interaction. Results on the usability of the proposed approach are positive.