If you’re looking for your company to be on the cutting edge it can be tempting to chase the newest, emerging technology like Augmented Reality (AR)! But, before diving into this tech – you should ask yourself: what is the problem I’m solving? Not every app can ‒ or should ‒ use AR. However, AR can be a great way to engage your users (Pokemon Go anyone?) and tell a story in a new or unexpected way.
We recently partnered with Citizen on an Augmented Reality app to disrupt the Insurance industry. Afterward, we were particularly excited about the prospect of exploring other ways in which this technology could be used to help people experience information in a new way.
Below are some examples of innovative ways businesses are currently using AR to help their customers in their everyday lives:
1. Overlay Information for Marketing Purposes
Book covers are an amazing way to engage readers even further. Carlton books is currently printing books that feature AR design – the reader can interact with the characters in the books when they scan their pages with an app. The images in these books act as sophisticated QR codes, or cards, that allow the app to scan the design and relay information onto the app using AR.
2. Enhancing Classroom Experience
AR can be an incredible tool in the classroom! Like adding more information to book covers in the example above, these educators worked to create a way for their students to interact with their classroom materials. In this particular example, students learned about the Civil War as they engaged with the AR app.
Read more about how used we partnered with Netop to engage students in the classroom.
3. Interior Design
Who hasn’t purchased furniture only to have it not fit into your home? IKEA is disrupting that idea by allowing you to place furniture in your home before you purchase it using AR. This app detects the floor plane to let you move around furniture and see where pieces will fit before you go shopping.
4. Advocating for Social Change
After their landfills started overflowing – Buenos Aires passed a “Zero Waste” law and used AR to motivate their citizens to recycle and clean up their neighborhoods. The government gamified the process of recycling and cleaning up trash as a motivator – and now they’re well on their way to being an incredibly environmentally-friendly city!
See how DevelopmentNow worked with Girl Rising to create an app for social change.
5. Prototyping Products
Right here in Oregon, people are pushing AR into the future. Clackamas Community College used AR to help them model an engine – which was both an educational tool, and an amazing way to prototype a manual transmission! They scanned all of the parts into 3D objects, allowing the students and professors to take a deeper dive into learning how an engine fits together.
6. Wayfinding in Medicine
AR has the potential to be truly revolutionary in medicine. While there are still many opportunities to create groundbreaking medical apps – there are some that already stand out from the rest. MedsightsTech is utilizing AR to help surgeons during operations. Whether it’s finding a tumor or testing efficiency, this app empowers surgeons with an almost x-ray like ability.
7. Wayfinding in Shopping
What if you no longer needed to find a sales associate to find the right hardware for your project? Lowe’s created an app that allows shoppers to use AR in order to find the exact right product. Simply search for the product you need, and the app will geo-locate you, direct you to the Lowe’s store, then use AR to highlight your path to the correct bin where your product is located – saving you both time and hassle!
8. Smart Mirrors Showing How you Look in Clothes
Smart mirrors are the way of the future! Using AR, you can see how you would look in clothes before purchasing them – lessening the chance that you’ll return items or have a negative shopping experience in a store. The development of smart mirrors has some early hiccups and drawbacks, but we can’t wait to see how this tech develops over time.
9. Bringing Insurance to Life
We partnered with Citizen to create a technology-driven sales tool that could make Whole Life insurance easier for a customer to understand, while enhancing the seller’s personal connection. Our goal was to help them come up with creative augmented reality (AR) options bring insurance to life at the InsureTech Connect 2017 conference.
Read more about it in our case study here.
Wondering if AR is right for your organization? We can help. Contact us today.
