can vuforia be used without unity and other beginner question

I have been surfing around forum and online looking for many guide for many week. However i am still quite lost. So i have some question which i could not find the solution, hope some of you can help me.

1 In the vuforia video guide, all of the tutorial are about using vuforia and unity. In order to build augemented reality application, is it a MUST to use vuforia together with unity? Can i build a augmented reality app with vuforia only and without unity?

2 In vufornia forum, i have saw many guide about placing a static 3d image or fixed motion image on top of a image target. However what i have to do for my project is to detect image target and place a interactive android gui on top of the image target. In addition, the user has to interact with the gui. For example, when a object with a specific marker is detected, a dropdown list is displayed and the user can interact with it.

The picture below shows what i need to make.

I could not find any guide about placing interactive android gui on top of a image target. Hope some of you here can point me to the right direction or give me hint on how should i go about doing it. Just suggestion or hint will do so that at least i know what to google or what keyword to search.

3 I am very new to augmented reality. So i would like to know what are some of the website or video for learning to make a augemented reality android app.

Thank you and have a nice day.