Gamification stuff we love: augmented reality
Augmented reality has really hit the main stream thanks to Pokemon Go, but what have people successfully done with it so far beyond games themselves. I have been fascinated with the technology when I first saw it used by a newspaper to have the Wimbledon Tennis trophy pictured with you anywhere thanks to scanning in the printed code in a smartphone app.
Advertisers and marketeers have been the first to dip into this new technology. Quite frankly if you have a product that would be best presented as a demo, an augmented reality 3-D simulation of the demo, just through scanning a code via a smartphone app is a tool worth investing in. In the movie and broadcast industry movie characters have come to life with special messages for the audience, book characters can do the same and mini-games related to the brands and to win prizes have been very successful.
In a recent conversation I had with my favourite augmented reality providers Zappar, they shared some of the cool work they had been involved with. In fact I had the conversation because I was in the process of creating my own Zap for this website and ran into something I couldn’t work out, within minutes I had an email from them, could they speak with me to help. And then it turns out for number of years I had been living around the corner from them and never knew it. Here is the Zap I ended up creating which you will also find on the website home page to introduce people to a little bit of gamification with augmented reality as the introduction. (to make it work you download the Zappar app and scan in the orange lightning strike).
An example they shared was from the world of learning and development, where an aircraft manufacturer took complete novices to undertake a wing assembly module through augmented reality, they also had test groups undertaking the same through manuals and desktop training. The results were excellent: 90% higher first time quality for the AR trained novices and 30% less time required to complete the task. Now from a business perspective if you are in a technical field this would mean bringing down training time and time away from the job for your staff and increased quality of competence quite quickly. The initial investment in creating this kind of training will be higher, but then the knock on benefits may well offset this cost.
In terms of technical support, engine creators have used smart glasses to have their field guys carry out diagnostics whilst at the same time bringing in a second set of eyes inside the office. It allows the support to be more thorough and decreases the amount of people on the road, but the level of service provide increases even with tricky problems. In the past they would have had to send out several people at different times to review and diagnose the problems.
From a tourist exploration perspective, the whole concept of treasure hunts becomes totally enhanced with 3D clues to make your discovery a lot more exciting. I remember doing an annual treasure hunt with picture questions based on small details on building, instead of having pictures, you have the 3D model instead and find an exact match, picture proof the find.
I am sure I have left out some cool applications for augmented reality, but we see it as a growth area in our enquiries and together with our business partners we are able to provide this kind of experience for your business.
Where will you apply augmented reality?
