Augmented reality and digital genre design — Situated simulations on the iPhone

In digital media - including augmented reality research - rapid change continue to take place at the levels of hardware and software. This paper focus on a third layer in a hierarchy of digital media - meaningware. Meaningware is the domain of digital textuality, its genres and conventions - all key subject matters of the humanities. To prevent cultural lag at the textual level the conduct of genre design is suggested as a methodological approach. The potential ´genre´ experimented with here is a type of augmented reality system we have named Situated Simulations. The system takes advantage of the convergence of mobility, broadband, rich graphics capabilities and positioning/orientation technologies, on off the shelf mobile phones. The current platform applied is Apple´s iPhone. The paper describes the development of three prototyped situated simulations designed for use in both learning and tourism. Interface and design issues are discussed, and a perspective on the epistemological increment of augmented reality and situated simulations is related to Bateson´s notion of double descriptions.