The HoloLens has a 34° diagonal field of view, whereas the standard field of view with both eyes is nearly 180°. This meant participants found themselves having to angle their heads downwards very frequently in order to see the glow effects, which can be an uncomfortable and unsafe posture to maintain when walking down stairs. 


University of Michigan - Ann Arbor

This prototype visualizes different stages of stairs using colored glow effects: red for upper and lower landings, cyan for the first and last surface level changes, yellow for the step following the first surface level change and preceding the last surface level change, and blue for the middle stairs. The Hololens also generated a path visualization to display the directional trend of the stairs. Beep sonification and audio description were once again utilized in the design. 


HoloLens Prototype for Assisted Stair Navigation

Zhao, Yuhang & Kupferstein, Elizabeth & Castro, Brenda & Feiner, Steven & Azenkot, Shiri. (2019). Designing AR Visualizations to Facilitate Stair Navigation for People with Low Vision. 10.1145/3332165.3347906. 


Designing AR Visualizations to Facilitate Stair Navigation for People with Low Vision


Researchers asked 12 participants — all of which being legally blind — to test their HoloLens prototype by walking both up and downstairs using the prototype in their preferred settings. Across participants, walking time had a significant increase when walking downstairs with the HoloLens and no significant increase or decrease when walking upstairs with the HoloLens. Participants reported feeling more psychologically secure when using the HoloLens to navigate stairs, though at a smaller rate than with the AR projection-based prototype. 


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