From Following to Understanding: Investigating the Role of Reflective Prompts in AR-Guided Tasks to Promote User Understanding

Augmented Reality (AR) is a promising medium for guiding users through tasks, yet its impact on fostering deeper task understanding remains underexplored. This paper investigates the impact of reflective prompts---strategic questions that encourage users to challenge assumptions, connect actions to outcomes, and consider hypothetical scenarios---on task comprehension and performance. We conducted a two-phase study: a formative survey and co-design sessions (N=9) to develop reflective prompts, followed by a within-subject evaluation (N=16) comparing AR instructions with and without these prompts in coffee-making and circuit assembly tasks. Our results show that reflective prompts significantly improved objective task understanding and resulted in more proactive information acquisition behaviors during task completion. These findings highlight the potential of incorporating reflective elements into AR instructions to foster deeper engagement and learning. Based on data from both studies, we synthesized design guidelines for integrating reflective elements into AR systems to enhance user understanding without compromising task performance.