Designing for Engagement and immersive Learning through Augmented Reality: A Participatory Design Case Study of Virtual Chemist App in an Educational Context

Augmented Reality (AR) technology holds significant potential to transform educational settings and improve learning, especially in complex disciplines such as chemistry, where abstract concepts and reactions often pose challenges for students. Despite this potential, the classical educational settings contains and implies barriers related to the practice-oriented design and user-friendly interactions of AR. This work present “Virtual Chemist”, an AR-based system that was designed together with overall 28 students and teachers in secondary-level chemistry education. We present here the outcomes of a participatory design case study, in which we conducted requirements, co-designed the system as well as observed their appropriation and interaction with the participants. Our results indicate that the system enhanced student motivation and engagement; students reported that the application was enjoyable and user-friendly, particularly valuing its capacity to elucidate complex chemical bonds and reactions through three-dimensional visualizations. The prototype and approach presented here will serve to discuss and reflect future research activities, methodological concepts, and experiences in the field of HCI and educational AR.