LAUSR

This paper reports a process to derive intermediate-level knowledge as a service design and analysis framework for designing digital services to offer alternate reality experiences, and analyzes the possible opportunities and pitfalls of the framework. The user experience felt by refining the meaning of real space through virtuality is defined as alternate reality experiences. Alternate reality experiences are typically achieved by modifying our eyesight or replacing our five senses to others, and they make our world interactive by implicitly influencing human attitudes and behaviors. First, the paper extracts observations for deriving the intermediate-level knowledge through the discussions raised in exploration workshops. In the workshops, the three digital services that utilize diverse strategies to offer alternate reality experiences are chosen. The workshops’ main focus is to examine how a person could have a sense of values in alternate reality experiences via the three digital services. Second, the paper shows how to derive the proposed service design and analysis framework from the extracted observations through expert analysis, then an overview of the framework is explained. Finally, the paper presents feasibility analysis of the proposed framework through a new digital service named Mindful Reminder as a case study for refining the service through focus group discussions. The approach described in the paper is to report a concrete process through which extracted observations can be converted into intermediate-level knowledge that can be used to design alternate reality experiences. Traditionally, the process for generating intermediate-level knowledge has not been well-documented; however, documenting the process is very important in theorizing the design of alternate reality experiences and helps effectively develop a variety of emerging advanced digital services that will offer alternate reality experiences in the future.