This impulse is a bit unusual compared to a museum or a festival, because it did not happen in one specific room. It happened at my desk, in front of piles of PDFs. I had to start preparing my PhD proposal even before finishing my master’s thesis, mainly because of time pressure and my personal situation with the army. That pressure turned into a very intense, focused research sprint. I spent several evenings reading and analysing work on AR, AI and IoT to frame a possible PhD topic that extends my master’s project instead of repeating it.
The three main sources that shaped this impulse were the paper “IoT + AR: pervasive and augmented environments for ‘Digi-log’ shopping experience” by Dongsik Jo and Gerard Jounghyun Kim, the CHI paper “UI Mobility Control in XR: Switching UI Positionings between Static, Dynamic, and Self Entities” by Siyou Pei and colleagues, and the book “Practical Augmented Reality” by Steve Aukstakalnis. Together they created a kind of mini-course for me: one about the future of physical retail, one about interaction patterns in XR, and one about the broader technology and human factors behind all of this.
Observations: From “Cool Idea” To Structured Research Questions
Reading Jo and Kim’s “Digi-log shopping” paper was the moment where my retail ideas suddenly felt less like a personal fantasy and more like part of an actual research landscape. Their concept of blending digital overlays with the physical store confirmed that the direction of my thesis is relevant, but it also showed what has already been tried: navigation, in-store recommendations, context-aware content. While I was reading, I kept noting down where my own IKEA and grocery scenarios overlap and where they differ. That helped me see that my contribution should not just be “AR in shopping”, but more specifically about interaction patterns and how to keep users in control in these pervasive systems.
The UI mobility paper pushed me even harder in that direction. It analyses how interface elements can be anchored in XR: fixed to the world, attached to the body, or moving with the user. I realised that many of my early sketches for AR glasses assumed a single style of UI placement without questioning it. The paper gave me vocabulary and structure to ask concrete questions: when should a navigation cue be world-locked, when should it follow the head, when should it sit on the wrist. This was very useful both for tightening my master’s concept and for defining a sharper PhD angle around “interaction patterns for context-aware AR glasses”.
Main Concept: PhD Preparation As Shared Fuel For Master And Future Work
The biggest impact of this impulse is that PhD preparation stopped feeling like a separate project. The literature review I did for the proposal feeds directly back into my master’s thesis. It gave me language, references and frameworks that I can already use now: “digi-log experiences” for describing hybrid retail journeys, XR UI mobility for structuring my interaction designs, and a more precise understanding of AR hardware constraints for my scenarios.
So this impulse was not a public event, but it was a very strong push for my Design & Research. Writing the PhD proposal turned my scattered interests in AR, AI and IoT into a more coherent research trajectory. It made me read deeper, think more critically about gaps in existing work, and see my master’s thesis as the first chapter of a longer exploration instead of a one-off project.
“IoT + AR: pervasive and augmented environments for ‘Digi-log’ shopping experience” by Dongsik Jo and Gerard Jounghyun Kim – an HCI paper on blending AR and IoT in retail environments. (PDF via https://d-nb.info/1177365146/34)
“UI Mobility Control in XR: Switching UI Positionings between Static, Dynamic, and Self Entities” by Siyou Pei et al. – a CHI 2024 paper on how XR interfaces move and anchor in space. (Project page: https://duruofei.com/projects/fingerswitch/)
“Practical Augmented Reality: A Guide to the Technologies, Applications, and Human Factors for AR and VR” by Steve Aukstakalnis – a comprehensive AR / VR textbook. (Publisher page: https://eu.pearson.com/practical-augmented-reality-a-guide-to-the-technologies-applications-and-human-factors-for-ar-and-vr/9780134094359)
AI Disclaimer
This blog post was polished with the assistance of AI.
