Apple’s developer site now contains Human Interface Guidelines for augmented reality apps. The guidelines are not hard, fast rules for developers working with ARKit, but more “best practices” Apple suggests for an ideal user experience. Guidelines that stand out include:

Use audio and haptic feedback to enhance the immersive experience. A sound effect or bump sensation is a great way to provide confirmation that a virtual object has come into contact with a physical surface or other virtual object.

To the extent possible, provide hints in context. Placing a three-dimensional rotation indicator around an object, for example, is more intuitive than presenting text-based instructions in an overlay.

Favor direct manipulation over separate onscreen controls. It’s more immersive and intuitive when a user can touch an object onscreen and interact with it directly, rather than interact with separate controls on a different part of the screen.

Suggest possible fixes if problems occur. Analysis of the user’s environment and surface detection can fail for a variety of reasons—there’s not enough light, a surface is too reflective, a surface doesn’t have enough detail, or there’s too much camera motion. If your app is notified of insufficient detail or too much motion, or if surface detection takes too long, offer suggestions for resolving the problem.

ARKit is a brand new technology that opens up a world of possibilities to app developers. But alongside its potential for magical, immersive experiences is the potential for user frustration as developers learn the hard way what works best. Apple’s guidelines – though released later than I’m sure many developers would like – should help minimize those frustrations.

TechCrunch’s Matthew Panzarino attended an ARKit demo event yesterday and got a taste of a wide variety of augmented reality apps coming to iOS 11. The apps shown off represent a broad range of categories including Ikea’s home decorating app, an interactive version of the popular children’s story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and a game based on The Walking Dead TV series that lets you fight zombies in your backyard.

As Panzarino notes, each of the apps demonstrated rely on very few onscreen controls or no controls at all other than the change of perspective accomplished by moving an iOS device. The apps also take very different approaches to prompting users to scan for flat surfaces when started, something which I expect to coalesce around consensus best practices as developers get their apps into the hands of customers. But perhaps most impressive of all is what developers have accomplished since WWDC. The development time, as Panzarino describes it, has been:

Incredibly short, all things considered. Some of the apps I saw were created or translated into ARKit nearly whole sale [sic] within 7-10 weeks. For asset-heavy apps like games this will obviously be a tougher ramp, but not if you already have the assets.

The TechCrunch roundup of six ARKit apps includes short descriptions and a video demonstration of each. The two demos that impressed me the most are Ikea’s app and the AR version of A Very Hungry Caterpillar, which you can watch after the break below, but be sure to head over to TechCrunch to see all the videos because each is a unique interpretation of what is possible with ARKit.

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