Blending the Best of the Real with the Best of the Virtual: Mixed Reality Case Studies in Healthcare and Defence

The resurgence of interest in the fields of Virtual, Augmented and, more recently, Mixed Reality (VR, AR and MxR) is—as was first witnessed in the 1990s—demonstrating the challenges and pitfalls facing interactive systems developers and adopters when confronted with a myriad of potential “high-tech” solutions from an increasingly saturated product marketplace. Adding to the confusion is the increase in appearance of regular online news features and commentaries claiming, for example, that AR is, or will be “superior” in some way to VR (and vice versa), or that MxR will outperform both. Yet, despite this confused state of affairs, there has, over the past two to three decades, been a growing body of evidence confirming that the disciplines of Human Factors (HF) or Human-Centred Design have an indispensable role to play in the choice and subsequent exploitation of these technologies for a wide range of real-world applications. This paper sets out to emphasise the importance of adopting HF techniques and knowledge when developing VR, AR and MxR, and presents a number of relevant MxR case studies in defence and healthcare to support the key premises presented.