Besides off-the-shelf AR applications that provide a variety of learning content designed by professional developers, creating a customized AR experience is also a good choice. Driven by increasing demands for AR in business, entertainment, and education over the past two decades, AR generative technology and tools have been rapidly developed. Today it has become possible to build low-cost D-I-Y AR experiences that can fit into the diverse needs of course content and learning activities. Here are a few ways to create your own customized AR experience:

1. Creating New AR Content by Using AR Composing Tools

There are many comparatively mature web-based or mobile-based applications that can be used to create an AR experience without coding skills, such as Reality Composer, UniteAR, and CoSpaces. You can find other tools in: The Resource of AR Apps.

Designing and making AR content is the core of the development, which depends on the learning content aligning to the curriculum.  High-quality AR content is crucial for bringing users brilliant experiences that encourages student engagement. In designing AR content, you need to consider:

• The virtual elements will be present in the application 

• How the elements are organized

• What scene and what form the virtual elements will be present in

• What interactions will be assigned to virtual elements

• How to get or create virtual elements

Creating AR content using the tools listed above is straightforward. Using Reality Composer as an example, the following lesson will help you learn how to build out science learning in 3D immersive and marker-based AR.

2. Creating Your Own AR Application

If you have coding skills and expertise in application development, you can use native software to create your own AR application. Combining the use of application development tools and plugin AR Software Development Kits (SDK), can bring AR developers and designers limitless freedom to create projects.

SDK is a set of software and programs used by software developers to make applications that can run on specific platforms (Valdellon, 2020). Applications development requires SDK to program on the different operating systems, such as common mobile operating systems Android and iOS. There are specific SDK tools for each operating system to support applications running on them. For AR applications, the first AR SDK- ARtoolkit, released in 1999, is compatible with multiple operating systems including Windows, Android, and Apple. Apple Inc. and Google LLC have also released ARKit and ARCore respectively, to support AR apps on iOS and Android platforms (Kljun, M., Geroimenko, V., & Čopič Pucihar, K., 2020).

Before you start creating an AR application, you first need to consider the users, development platform, how to find and use specific AR content (i.e., 2D/3D objects, videos), devices that your specific users can use to access the AR app, where user data will be stored (locally or in the cloud), and cost. Review the following blogs to help you get acquainted with AR development:

How to create an Augmented Reality App

Six Top Tools to Build Augmented Reality Mobile Apps

Workflow for Developing AR Applications

There is no standard template to develop an application, especially when it comes to the complexity of AR in an educational context. The following workflow of developing an AR application, gives you the basic process of development, in which you can access out-linked resources related to AR development platforms, authoring AR content, and some basic knowledge for Interaction Design (ID). Visit the User Experience Design Principles site to increase ease of use for your students. 

Creating a new AR application is costly, not only in regards to purchasing resources for development, but also in the effort you will put into the developmental process. Before starting an AR project, the following things should be considered:

• Review your teaching plan to see where you can incorporate a new AR app into the lesson and if you intend to build a full, immersive AR virtual class how it will be used

• Reflection on how AR will facilitate or hinder your teaching objectives, referring to its advantages and barriers

• Describe how students will use the application and in what context. This is important to clarify the functions and specifics of the applications. 

• Select an AR development platform that can best meet your needs

• Make a plan for development. Remember that it is a process of developing a digital product to facilitate teaching and learning. Before you start, clarify the cost, design plan, schedule, resources deployed, technical conditions, and an implementation plan.

Workflow of Developing an AR Application

Tutorials for Creating New AR Apps

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