In Chapter 4 of my thesis, I outlined the primary vehicle through which to address the key topics and questions of the thesis: the creation and evaluation of sound ARt experiences. These have, in their development and iteration, drawn on a proto-framework of implicit designerly tendencies or ‘guidelines’ that I have found effective - drawing from points of resistance (Chapter 4), and relevant perspectives from the field (Chapter 3). In this section the aim is to outline these guidelines in a way that may allow for the creation of similar works of Art in the future, by members of the experimental music, computational art, and digital humanities fields.

These design guidelines are therefore subject to iteration, and the latest version can be found on the XRt Space website, a community-editable repository created to host and update them. The principles used to guide the patterns draw on the resistances outlined Chapter 4, namely taking a DIY approach, decoupling from the ocularcentric and layering paradigms of typical AR experience, and attempting to navigate an inherently consumerist space whilst trying not to contribute to exploitative systems of oppression that uphold it. They are also guided by the theoretical lenses of Chapter 3 and propositions of Chapter 9: which states that a participant’s and performer’s cognitive processes in the experience of AR artworks are embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended, and have the potential to be modulated to extents that offer novel aesthetic experiences of augmented material, embodiment, and space. The following sections outline three design guidelines:

• Designing for Rich AR Experience
• Consideration of the AR Instrument
• Role of the Virtual in the AR Environment

Building upon the foundation provided by these guidelines, further investigation could develop these guidelines into ‘design patterns’, a concept from computer science that describes a set of ‘communicating objects and classes that are customized to solve a general design problem in a particular context’ (Gamma, 1995). A design pattern thus ‘names, abstracts, and identifies the key aspects of a common design structure that make it useful for creating a reusable object-oriented design’. Design patterns serve to be less rigid than frameworks, more problem-focused than guidelines; whilst inheriting the meaningful organisational structure that comes with an object-oriented design approach. Design patterns are characterised by having four elements:

• The pattern name describes the design problem at a higher level of abstraction
• The problem describes the specific situation in which you might apply the pattern
• The solution describes the relationships between elements of the pattern that aim to solve the problem
• The consequences are the results and trade-offs of applying the pattern

Works Cited

1. Gamma, E. (Ed.). (1995). Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software. Addison-Wesley.

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