ARCritique: Supporting Remote Design Critique of Physical Artifacts through Collaborative Augmented Reality

Design critique sessions require students and instructors to jointly view and discuss physical artifacts. However, in remote learning scenarios, available tools (such as videoconferencing) are insufficient due to ineffective, inefficient communication of spatial information. This paper presents ARCritique, a mobile augmented reality application that combines KinectFusion and ARKit to allow users to 1) scan artifacts and share the resulting 3D models, 2) view the model simultaneously in a shared virtual environment from remote physical locations, and 3) point to and draw on the model to aid communication. A preliminary evaluation of ARCritique revealed great potential for supporting remote design education.