Flow experience in AR application: Perceived reality and perceived naturalness

Abstract

As the emergence of augmented reality (AR), game industry has promptly adopted AR to their products for better user experiences. Due to fact that the AR could deliver more realistic experience to users, AR based applications received a lot of attentions from various industries. Recent researches revealed that AR game can enhances users’ flow experience more than ordinary game applications leading to better educational performance. This study pays attention to the phenomenon that AR based application can lead users’ flow more than simple online applications and explored antecedent factors users’ flow experiences. By utilizing text mining method and structured interview with AR Application users, this study discovered two influential factors on users flow experience; perceived reality and perceived naturalness. We also found that perceived naturalness is a more influential factor than perceived reality on users’ flow in AR context. In addition, this research discovered privacy concerns as a main cause of decreasing flow. © Springer International Publishing AG 2017.