Designers, the Stage Is Yours! Medium-Fidelity Prototyping of Augmented & Virtual Reality Interfaces with 360theater

While augmented and virtual reality technologies are becoming mainstream, it is still technically challenging and time-consuming to create new applications. Many designers draw from traditional low-fidelity prototyping methods that do not lend themselves well to designing in 3D. Developers use high-end programming frameworks such as Unity and Unreal which require significant hardware/software setups and coding skills. We see a gap in the medium-fidelity range where there is an opportunity for new tools to leverage the advantages of 360° content for AR/VR prototyping. Existing tools, however, have only limited support for 3D geometry, spatial and proxemic interactions, puppeteering, and storytelling. We present 360theater, a new method and a tool for rapid prototyping of AR/VR experiences, which takes dioramas into the virtual realm by enhancing 360° video capture with 3D geometry and simulating spatial interactions via Wizard of Oz. Our comparative evaluation of techniques with novice and experienced AR/VR designers shows that 360theater can close the gap and achieve a higher fidelity and more realistic AR/VR prototypes than comparable methods.