Consumer expectations of digital are increasing — will you be ready?
The expectations that any user has about an experience influences their satisfaction with it. For designers working in product creation, understanding the existing beliefs (and biases) of their consumers will help them create better experiences. Much of the conversation around augmented reality has focussed on the technical specifications and future promise of the medium, but with the exception of a few breakaway hits, the reality for user experience has seen mixed results.
Early implementations of Augmented Reality technology on smartphones have elevated user expectations of what digital experiences can be (magical & engaging) and should be (personalized & omnichannel). To grasp the true value and consumer expectations of immersive media, designers need to engage with AR tech and test its capabilities. While 2D and mobile designers have 90% of the skills they need to work in AR, spatial design has unique demands and affordances that you should get aquianted with before you dive in.
In this blog post I’m going to discuss how the integration of Augmented Reality tech on smartphones is elevating user expectations of digital experiences. Second, I’d like to invite all Portland area designers and producers to attend a AR interaction design and prototyping workshop hosted by Torch, 52 Limited, and me on Jan 24th. Click here for details.
How AR is being used in 2019
The increasing prevalence of AR in digital experiences (Snap’s Lens studio has had 250,000 Lenses that been viewed more than 15 billion times) means that consumers have increasing savvy about AR. The capabilities of AR are much broader than just having adorable cat ears or rainbows spewing out of your mouth. Here are some of my favorite AR use cases:
- Historic building managers are using AR to give cultural tours of their spaces.
- Artists are creating experiences that can only be discovered in specific locations using AR tech
- AR data visualization gives new ways of representing information leading to different insights
And coming in 2019, I cannot wait for Niantic’s follow up game after the blockbuster Pokemon Go, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite:
In addition to these cultural, research, or gaming applications of AR, there are additional use cases emerging in healthcare, training, events, and brand storytelling. Consider one example from retail. In competition to Snap’s Lens Studio, Facebook created Spark — a developer platform for people to create AR-enabled ads for Facebook and Instagram. Based on a single Facebook ad, a shopper can select a product, like these sunglasses below, customize them, and then purchase in an uninterrupted consumer journey.
This use case streamlines the old shopping paradigm of discover, try-on, and buy. AR offers new opportunities to transform consumer journeys — maybe your goal is to make the journey more efficient. Or, perhaps the goal is to give people experiences that are location-based, or access to unique experiences they can’t find elsewhere. Any of those goals are achievable using AR tech and these existing use cases are raising consumer expectations of their digital experiences and designers need to be able to respond by integrating AR into their experiences.
Start 2019 with prototyping in AR
If you want start building in AR, then come to the Portland-based workshop on January 24th and get hands on experience with:
- Exploring key concepts of interaction design for 3D spaces
- Existing AR use cases and applications
- Concepting, planning, and building your own AR prototype using Torch AR
I ran a version of this workshop in Dec 2018 and here’s what people had to say about it:
I’ve played around in Unity and look at things like the Hololens…with Torch it’s totally different. It’s intuitive and simple to me so it lowers that barrier to entry.
The workshop was great — it was about working with a team and bouncing ideas off one another and building experiences that are community-based
Workshop participants left with a broad understanding of the capabilities of augmented reality as well as hands-on experience working with interaction design for AR. I look forward to seeing more AR experiences from each of these participants.
Start the new year with new skills. And no previous experience required. Register today and get ready to apply your existing design skills to a new reality. It’s important to stay in the know — especially since your users are going to be.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks to Tom Emrich for the Michael Kors example. If you want to read more about the AR industry, Tom’s recent article with predictions for 2019 is a good place to start.
