The Establishment and Usability Evaluation on a Markerless AR-Based Hairstyle Simulation System

Introduction

Due to the improvement of the life quality, personal style, taste, and dressing catch more and more attention of ordinary folks. The hairstyle is one of the most important components in a person’s appearance. Besides, it represents one’s image and mental inside. Hair is not only the pursuit of personal style is also an aesthetic practice (Chen, 2008).

The change of hairstyles can improve a person’s appearance for a period. Moreover, if properly designed an effective finishing touch may be achieved. Before hair design, the hair stylist has to know well the expectation and need of customers. If the design of the hair stylists doesn’t reach a consensus with customers, not only consuming disputes may happen, but also the customer may lose confidence in her/his appearance, and sense of loss may be caused. It takes time to lengthen hairs and re-cut them. In the past, the references for hair stylists to design a hair style included: customers’ narratives, hairstyle magazines, celebrities’ hairstyles, and most importantly, years of experience of the hair stylist. However, not all hairstyles in books could well fit the face of customers. Sometimes it causes troubles when designers communicate with customers. The final appearance of hair styling could be determined only after the actual haircut is performed (Lin & Li, 2009; Isman & Isbulan, 2010; Liu & Lin, 2010).

This work is aimed to develop a “Markerless Augmented Reality Hair Simulation System” (MARHSS) by using of the markerless AR technologies (Taehee & Hollerer, 2008, 2009). Before the haircut, MARHSS provides a platform for customers and stylists to discuss the design. This system is able to well fit the hair to the face of customer based on the face detection and AR techniques. Therefore, the hair stylist may obtain more adequate references according to the customer’s preference and selection.

This paper focuses on addressing the following research questions:

• (1)

  Is the interface designed in this study usable?

• (2)

  Do users feel emotionally satisfied and like to interact with this system?

• (3)

  Does the system provide a good hairstyling learning environment?

Literature Review

In the related research of hair design and hair simulation (Nguyen Van & Do Nang, 2010 ; Volino & Magnenat-Thalmann, 2006; Xiaolan & Hongbin, 2005; Yizhou, 2001), it was found that most applied virtual reality that was able to simulate a variety of hairstyles and avatars (Huan, Binh, & Toan, 2009; Ward et al., 2007; Ward, Galoppo, & Lin, 2006). Via the simulation, users could interact with the system. However, although the system was capable of simulating hairstyles, it lacked “sense of reality” while people were having interaction with it. Seeing the shortcoming of the system, we will apply Augmented Reality (AR) technology that has the specialty of combining reality and virtual world to develop a hairstyle simulation with real-time interaction.