This is an opinion piece on the current and future state of augmented reality applications by Clinton Bonner, Marketing Manager of the global developer community TopCoder.
Catchy slogans and sayings from the 1980's showered us with memorable tag lines such as "Just Do It.", "Sit Ubu sit, good dog. (ruff!)" and the iconoclastic, "I want my MTV.". If you are of a certain age, you probably also remember the old ladies staring at an over sized bun with an unimpressive burger appearing like a dot on an otherwise vast and blank canvass. Those ladies were of course asking, "Where's the beef!?" as part of the most famous Wendy's ad campaign of all time. Today, the main question being asked of all technology innovations is just as poignant.
Where's the value?
Innovations in technology, especially those focusing on user-facing applications center around delivering value. Providing some new service, some new piece of content, some new bit of relevant data at the right moment that improves the end-user's experience, saves him time or otherwise improves some aspect of his relationship with the brand. Kind of obtuse I know, but if you can deliver to the end user something deemed of value, logic dictates that individual will be more likely to stay with your brand or service, share the experience socially, purchase more from you and perhaps do so more often. These are things that keep marketers up all night.
A technology that shows impressive promise when it comes to affecting a human's behavior at relevant moments is augmented reality. Growing up in the 80's and early 90's, the idea wasn't even piercing the mainstream yet. Instead we were sold on virtual reality interfaces where the entire environment was recreated and you experienced "life" in an enhanced digitally reformatted way. If you've seen "the Lawnmower Man", and here's to hoping you didn't, then you know how this story ends. Thankfully, a much smarter technology evolved, that of augmented reality. It just makes better sense to overlay data and graphics on top of the real world instead of recreating the entire environment surrounding the user. Of course augmented reality needed the smart phone proliferation ensuring millions of people around the globe could make use of the technology, and that has of course happened (and uptake of smart devices continues to accelerate). So now, augmented reality is at that crucial stage where it must make the leap from; "Look at this cool thing you can do with your phone!" to "Wow, that was valuable to me.".
When I watched the below video, my initial response was; "Very cool!" but by the end of what is a short video I was saying; "Wait, would I actually use this?". In other words, would this app. deliver any value to me?
I encourage you to watch the video and ask yourself that very question.
I do not intend to pick on Blippar (or Heinz for that matter) and I like a lot of what is happening here including the design and the way the app. appears to function. But I have to call into question what this app. delivers. Ultimately, it's glorified recipes you'd find on the back of a label. Having to hold either the ketchup bottle or the phone (perhaps both at once) to access some of this information kind of defeats the purpose seeing as I need my hands to cook. I understand I can download the recipe to my phone, set the phone down on the counter and cook, but will I? More importantly would you?
I think this is a classic case of "Just because you can doesn't mean you should.". Now here's the really good news for Blippar, Heinz and the rest of us.
That Terrible Glowing Puck
Hockey fans might recall for a brief stint, starting in 1996, Fox broadcasts of the NHL included an innovation called FoxTrax. You wouldn't know it if you were in the seats at a game, but the puck itself was retro-fitted with sensors that enabled the TV broadcast to augment the viewers reality. If you recall, the puck glowed an ambient blue hue and the purpose was of course to allow viewers at home to more easily follow the game. Well, it was met with mixed results to say the least and fairly quickly, the blue puck faded from our memories faster than a fallen Jedi into the backdrop of the Dagobah. What most don't realize is that that innovative attempt, spawned the company SporTVision who has brought to market really valuable augmented experiences including the 1st & Ten "Yellow Line" for the NFL and NCAA, the K-Zone routinely seen on baseball broadcasts and the Racef/x system for motorsports. In short, though their first innovation "failed", they re-envisioned how to apply the technology, starting with the value the graphics added to the user experience, and now, they have several run-away hits on their hands and the Emmy awards to prove it.
At this point, for the greater augmented reality landscape, it is more about creating brand new experiences that deliver value and steering clear of recreating existing experiences where the value to the consumer is already questionable at best. The emerging 3.0, coming NFC technologies, the ever-advancing social landscape powered by all the personalized data floating on the airwaves and the continued advancement of the smart-devices themselves all lead me to believe augmented reality has an insanely bright future. Even with all these coming advancements, it still boils down to creating a new experience for the user and through that experience, delivering something of value.
Image Credit: blog.al.com, imbd.com, darth.wikia.com
Video Credit: youtube.com/blippar1