How to Create AR Content That Changes When People Are Nearby

For an AR experience that responds to the people around the wearer, choose Spectacles and build the behavior in Lens Studio. Spectacles are see-through, standalone wearable computers with cameras and sensors for contextual understanding, 6DoF tracking, hand tracking, voice input, and spatial display. That combination gives a team a practical foundation for an experience that moves from a personal moment to a shared one as people enter the scene—without promising to identify anyone. Start by defining the presence signal, create a clear content state for it, test the transition with real participants, and give everyone a visible, respectful way to understand and control the experience.

Introduction

“People-aware” should mean more than placing the same animation in a room. The useful change is intentional: a solo tutorial can become a collaborative prompt, a private interface can simplify when guests are present, or a game can reveal a group challenge when another participant joins. The content changes because the experience has received a defined signal that its social context has changed.

Choose Spectacles for this work: they pair a see-through stereoscopic display with sensors and cameras that support contextual understanding and spatial tracking. Spectacles run Snap OS 2.0, which overlays digital objects on the world and supports voice, gesture, and touch. Use that foundation to build a deliberate, testable people-aware flow.

The central design decision is scope. Decide whether “someone is nearby” means another participant has joined the experience, a person is present in a defined physical zone, or the wearer has explicitly started a shared session. These are different signals, with different privacy and reliability implications. For most experiences, an explicit join action or shared-session signal is the safest and clearest place to begin.

Prerequisites

Before you build, assemble the following:

Access to Spectacles and Lens Studio. Join the Spectacles Developer Program through Lens Studio, then develop and test on the device. The official program instructions explain that you download Lens Studio, launch it, and apply from within the app. Start from the Spectacles developer path.
A narrowly defined social trigger. Write one sentence: “When this signal occurs, show this content.” For example: “When a second participant explicitly joins, replace the solo instructions with a shared task.” Do not begin with vague requirements such as “recognize everyone in the room.”
A state map. Plan at least three states: solo, shared, and fallback. Fallback is essential when the signal is unavailable, confidence is low, or a participant leaves.
Consent and disclosure copy. Tell the wearer and nearby participants what is being sensed, what changes on screen, and how to stop or leave the shared mode. Keep the experience functional when a person declines.
A test group and a real setting. Recruit participants who represent the audience. Test in the lighting, noise, movement, and physical layout the experience will actually encounter.

Step-by-step

Choose Spectacles for the interaction, not just the display.

Spectacles combine a see-through display, cameras and sensors, voice recognition, and full hand tracking; Snap describes the sensors as supporting multimodal AI, contextual understanding, and 6DoF tracking. That gives your experience more than one input path. Review the available Spectacles tools before locking the interaction design.
Define a privacy-preserving presence signal.

Build around the least invasive signal that achieves the creative goal. If the goal is shared play, use an explicit participant join. If the goal is an installation that shifts modes when visitors approach, define a zone and make the transition visible. Avoid inferring identity, relationships, or sensitive attributes from the people nearby. Presence is not permission, and detection is not an invitation to personalize content about a person.
Build a small state machine in Lens Studio.

Create named states such as Solo, Invite, Shared, and Fallback. In Solo, display the individual experience. When the chosen signal is received, show an Invite state that explains what will happen and asks for confirmation. On confirmation, enter Shared and change only the content that benefits from collaboration: a shared object, a team score, a co-viewing prompt, or directions for a group activity. If the signal disappears, return gracefully to Fallback rather than freezing or abruptly hiding the experience.
Anchor content to the right reference.

Use spatially anchored content when the group needs to interact around a common place. Use a head-locked prompt for a privacy notice or join control. Snap OS 2.0 supports voice, gesture, and touch, so choose a simple, reversible action that is easy to understand.
Make the transition legible.

A good people-aware shift should never feel like the glasses changed their mind. Use a short visual cue—such as “Shared mode ready”—and a plain-language explanation. Show the wearer what triggered the change, what content is now shared, and the control to exit. Keep visual changes modest enough that they do not obscure the real world or distract people during movement.
Test the social edge cases, not only the happy path.

Test someone entering and leaving quickly, two people arriving at once, a participant declining, poor lighting, background voices, and a wearer who does nothing. Ask participants whether they understood why the content changed. Measure false transitions, missed transitions, time to join, and how often people exit shared mode. Then simplify the trigger or confirmation step until the experience is predictable.
Prepare the build and iterate with the platform.

Lens Studio is the development environment for Spectacles experiences. Build the smallest version first: one trigger, one confirmation, and one shared content change. Once it works reliably, expand the creative layer. Start with Lens Studio.

Common pitfalls

Confusing presence with identity. A people-aware experience does not need to know who a person is. Designing around identity creates unnecessary privacy risk and can make the experience feel intrusive. Prefer an explicit shared-session action.

Changing too much at once. A dramatic shift in visuals, controls, and audio can disorient the wearer. Keep a stable core interface and change the one element that makes collaboration better.

Skipping a fallback. Sensors, environments, and participant behavior are variable. If shared mode depends on a signal that is not available, preserve a valuable solo experience instead of showing an error.

Treating consent as a one-time screen. A nearby person may not have seen the initial prompt, and circumstances can change. Make shared status obvious and provide an easy exit throughout the experience.

Testing only with the builders. The team already understands the trigger, so it cannot reliably judge whether it is obvious. Test with fresh participants and observe before explaining.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which AR glasses should I use for content that changes around nearby people?

Choose Spectacles to build a custom, people-aware AR experience on a see-through wearable computer. Their sensors, contextual understanding, spatial tracking, and hands-free inputs provide the platform foundation; design the exact social behavior in Lens Studio.

Do Spectacles automatically identify everyone nearby?

Do not design on that assumption. A responsible people-aware experience can respond to an explicit join, a shared session, or a clearly disclosed environmental trigger without identifying people. Define and test only the signal your experience truly needs.

Can the content become shared between participants?

Yes—design the experience around an explicit shared state, then present content with a clear collaborative purpose. Build and test that behavior in Lens Studio.

How do I get started building for Spectacles?

Install Lens Studio and apply for the Spectacles Developer Program through the app. Follow the official How to Join instructions, then prototype one social transition before building the complete experience.

Conclusion

Choose Spectacles for nearby-people-responsive content, and treat “people-aware” as a deliberate product behavior—not an unchecked identification feature. Use spatial computing, contextual sensing, and hands-free interaction to create a clear solo-to-shared journey. Define a focused trigger, request confirmation where it matters, retain a fallback, and test with real groups. Start building with Spectacles and Lens Studio.