by Lisa Fresser -

The hype of AR

The preliminary stage of Augmented Reality started already in 1968 at Harvard when Ivan Sutherland, computer scientist, created an AR head-mounted display syste. In the following years multiple universities and companies further developed the AR technologie first for digital displays and later also for warables.

While 2018 Augmented Reality was deep into the Valley of Tears, it disapeared on the Gartner Hype Cycle in 2020.

The Gartner Hype Cycle
The Gartner Hype Cycle is a methode for Executives but also interested person can navigate themselfs during this fast moving time no a days through the current hypes and new technologies. This helps to estimate risks and chances of upcoming technologies.

2005 was the first time that AR appeared on Gartner’s Hype Cycle. In 2018 Gartner still predicted it will take 5 to 10 years until it reaches the plateau of productivity.


So why did it disappear in 2020? Augmented Reality did not lose it’s potential, it just developed so fast that it is not an emerging technologie any more.
This means that AR has matured and ready to become an industry-proven technology in which executives can safely invest in to improve and innovate their businesses.
Gartner predicts that in the end of 2021 AR will be used by more than a third of all companies.


Sources
Augmented Reality aus Gartners Hype-Zyklus verschwunden – Wie geht es weiter?
Gartner Identifies Five Emerging Technology Trends That Will Blur the Lines Between Human and Machine

by Lisa Fresser -

Augmented Reality for marketing purpose

AR for marketing

It is nothing new anymore that visual content is indispensable for convincing the customer to buy. AR brings a new level of marketing experience and creates many new ways to present products. The user now dives into a digital world of a product and is able to experience it before buying. An emotional connection can be build and used as persuasion.

While the place for information of physical products is nearly always limited, with AR there is infinite place and possibilities to give more information about the origin, production process or other background knowledge about the product.

AR in the field of marketing can be used to

• give a better user experience
• bring pagaging to life
• tourism
• fashion
• …

Best practices

Packaging of beverages
When using the app and turning the camera on the beverage can, an entertainment clip will be shown. This method can also be used to show for example the ingredients of the drink.

IKEA:
The Swedish furniture shop offers an AR-app to their customers to place the furniture into their home. Compared to seeing the products printed on paper, this way makes the decision easier and also brings a fun factor with it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UudV1VdFtuQ

PEPSI
For the champagne Unbelievable Pepsi AR is used to entertain people waiting for the bus on the station. This is done by a transparent monitor instead of the conventional advertising space on the bus stop. It seems like just seeing through the glass but virtual elements will be added.

Sources
Industrie of things
CMO Adobe
Omina360

by Lisa Fresser -

Augmented Reality for industry

Augmented Reality (AR) is a growing and also promising field for industry. While companies like DHL or several automotive manufacturer make progress in the direction of Industry 4.0 with this new technology, there are many other possible use cases for AR which are not that evolved yet.

Selection of possible areas of applications:

  • trainings
  • maintenance and troubleshooting
  • visualization of data and work steps
  • marketing
  • brand experience on exhibitions and fairs

With AR workers can access digital information and overlay that information with the physical world. By combining real world environments with context-specific virtual information, manual operations are done more efficiently, also costly mistakes can be reduced and the mental effort for transferring information from an abstract repre sentation (e.g. monitor) to the physical world can be significantly reduced.

Example use case for troubleshooting:

Multiple studies proved that AR for industry increase productivity by an average of 32%. A big advantage of AR compared to Virtual Reality is the adaption with different devices like laptops, smartphones, tablets, smartwatches or data glasses. There is no external hardware needed and especially in today’s digital world of indispensable smartphone availability it is easy to implement AR in the daily life of employees.