Clothing Integrated Augmented Reality Markers

The future vision of commonplace, everyday wear of augmented reality glasses, brings potential to the fashion world, where physical and virtual aspects can be blended to create an overall aesthetic. An enabler for this is the integration of computer-readable visual markers as part of clothing design. We introduce a design space for the use of visual markers on garments, with aspects of visual style, tag size, content, content type, customizability, attachment technique, and reader application. Two prototypes of clothing-integrated visual marker solutions, viewed with a mobile augmented reality (AR) application, are presented and evaluated via a focus group study, an online survey and an in-the-wild study. Our findings highlight that when designing wearable computing garments, the visual design is very important for acceptability, and that a user's personal style largely dictates their preference for the concept and willingness to wear the garment. Wearable AR markers were considered as suitable for wear in social situations, such as parties or events, and as a tool for group cohesion or for showing campaign or ideological information.