Augmenting the reality
My two cents on Augmented Reality, AKA quick and amateurish research wrapping my head around the current AR trends — with emphasis on art projects. This secondary research was conducted for the sake of my third DesignLab project: an app called ARea.
Augmented reality is a field that is quickly developing, yet still lacking a major wide-spread use, partially due to the current need for a screen. The technical capabilities are nevertheless rapidly improving for both Android and iOS and users are getting used to one or another form of AR.
People usually develop quick and strong bonds due to the imminent “wow effect” and novelty but their interest quickly evaporates as the use is still rather limited.
One of the issues is also an insufficient explanation of what the app does and how to exactly use it. This can be partially avoided by an interactive tutorial after download, explaining its possibilities.
I have discovered many mentions of AR apps and projects that deal with either learning, city exploration, navigation, or art enhancement. The problem I can see right now is that they are either very small in their scale, limited to one city, with bad technical bugs, or not explained well enough.
The apps that currently exist can be divided into the following categories:
1. VISUAL BROWSER
This is the most functional and practical usage of AR. Applications such as Google Lens (and Bliparr) function as a “visual browser” or “visual Wikipedia” of the world by visually recognizing your surroundings, translating objects seen on your camera, and providing you with relevant information about them. You can translate written signs, discover your surroundings when walking in a new city, navigate with visual indications on your screen, identify objects (like a kind of flower or a breed of a dog), etc.
A relatable personal story no-one asked for: The Google Translate lens literally saved my life when I was in Japan and spent most of my time pointing my phone at anything written in order to make sure I don’t eat dog food and don’t wash my hair with laundry detergent.
Google also added an AR element to the Google maps directions called Live View— you can now see where you are walking through arrows on your screen.
This type of AR is great for travel, city navigation, and marketing purposes, with a big potential for fun and gamified city walks as well.
This is where Wander AR City guide app fits in. It is basically an interactive city guide, built around treasure hunt-like experiences with interesting, off-the-beaten-track stops and stories, some of them enhanced with AR. You are expected to finish each “mission” by finding all the stops. It contains a map view and navigation to ease you in.
2. FUN AND GAMES
Another sort of AR is the one made for the sake of fun and novelty. The example that obviously comes to mind is Pokemon GO, the game that stormed the world back in 2016 and is still going strong in 2020. This game literally turns your world into your own playground, featuring “Pokestops” — real-world locations enhanced with AR Pokemons you need to catch.
One of the major players in the field of AR development is Snapchat. They were among the first major apps to introduce face mapping and adding AR elements to users’ faces (didn’t we all have a dog’s tongue hanging from our mouth at one point or another?).
But Snap (the company behind Snapchat) seem to be serious in their effort to move AR forward, for purposes that could be used for much more than just entertainment.
They are building their AR platform and introducing new features to it constantly. Every AR element that users can use is called a “lens”. They develop new lenses constantly and provide the users with the possibility of creating their own lens through a desktop application called Lens Studio.
One of Snap’s more recent projects is Landmarkers. It maps global sights (such as the Eiffel tower), allowing adding new layers on top of them, promising to bring the world’s famous landmark to (an AR) life.
Another project is called Local Lenses is based on city mapping of larger areas. These sorts of undertakings are Snap’s way of normalizing AR engagement with the world, fortifying their user base, and setting themselves apart from Instagram that uses filters for users’ faces but doesn’t provide further ways of AR interaction.
These projects blend partially into the last category — the AR enhancement of art.
3. ARTSY FARTSY
And finally, the type that interests me the most — AR enhancement of art. This category is the most relevant to my own design project which will focus on fun and artsy AR elements dispersed throughout a city, ready to be discovered during walking tours. I have come across many mentions of AR apps and projects that deal with art, either inside of museums or in the open air.
One of the big players in the field of AR art is Artivive, an application that in its own words #bringsarttolife. Created primarily for the Albertina gallery in Vienna, Artvive is quickly moving forward to other locations and providing artists with a way of developing their first 3 AR projects for free.
Artivive was the primary inspiration for my app design, with the difference that I would like to concentrate mostly on the outside, including a way for users to discover and navigate to the AR areas, while Artivive works mostly inside museums and galleries.
Very similar to my own design project is an endeavor Apple undertook last year in 6 global cities. They have created a time-limited app called AR(T) Walk — a guided tour of the city stops enhanced by AR elements.
The AR technology works with “anchors” — exact areas or objects which serve as the starting point for recognition and for layering on the AR elements.
The exact positioning has major importance and inconsistent anchor point interferes with the final effect — the illusion of not being sufficiently blended into its environment and believable.
AR(T) Walk avoided this by setting up a specific ritual for reaching an anchor — after reaching the exact spot, you are supposed to face away from the anchor by finding another object that serves as a secondary anchor point. Then you move a half circle and should reach the proper position. This ensures you are in the same height and the exact angle.
Other applications aimed at AR art in the real-world are for example:
Here is a comparative analysis of strengths and weaknesses of these 3 ARt apps:
This is another app worth mentioning that brings art (and street art) to life. This app developed by an Israeli artist called Damian for his own artistic production works on his street art as well as on products sold in galleries. It implements 3D AR renderings which change angle as you move. The app also features a category of “Findings” — listing all the existing AR locations and indicating if a user already found them, or not yet.
If we get back for a second to pinning AR objects into reality, Google has their own “AR pins” — the Google 3D animals: When you search for an animal on Google, let’s say a penguin, you will get an option of viewing a penguin in a life-size up close, pinned into your surrounding.
It works so far only with few dozens of animals but it is still good fun and the visuals are pretty great, the animals are in real size (which can be made smaller or bigger, but you still get to know the exact % of the real size), AND they sound and behave naturally. It is all in all a great implementation.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Many companies are working on technically advancing and spreading Augmented Reality.
- AR is slowly becoming more normative, thanks to mainstream apps such as Snapchat employing more and more AR elements into their product.
- Users can be expected to try a new AR app if it promises entertainment and novelty, but the app needs to be well explained and functional.
- People like to play — which is proven not only by the success of Pokemon GO, the whole gaming industry, mobile games, the revival of board games, and escape rooms.
- AR is becoming a more standard way of enhancing experiences and bringing more entertainment and interaction into museum visits and art viewing.
- The idea of ARea (my design project) taps both into the gaming aspect (finding a hidden object others didn’t know were there) and the growing need for interaction and entertainment on top of our reality.
FEATURES TO INCORPORATE TO MY PROJECT
- Map + AR directions (possibly through Google maps implementation)
- Notifications about nearby areas
- Tutorial introducing app’s functions on the homepage
- Gallery to store all recordings in one easily accessible place.
- Guiding the exact positioning and finding the anchor point (some sort of indications on screen). Users need some visual indications on the screen to achieve the right anchor point — arrows, vibrations, or voice commands. There might also be a miniature photo of what you are supposed to point at in order to give you a better idea (possibly combined with the visual indicators).
Sources:
https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2019/04/snapchat-landmarkers-ar-lens-studio.html
https://www.wallpaper.com/art/apple-augmented-reality-art-walk-new-museum
https://jasoren.com/augmented-reality-in-travel/
https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/04/snapchat-scan-platform/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-12/who-s-in-charge-of-the-augmented-city
