My first useful Augmented Reality (AR)experience, thanks to the lockdown
Being a designer, it is tough not to get excited about the tech buzz words. One thing is AR. In the past few years, I made quite a lot of concepts based on AR. But few questions always come in the way like “But, Why?” “Do we really need it?” “What difference is gonna make” “Can we get any value out of it?” I never had an answer for any of it. I think, I have some real-time experience now to make sense of where and how to use it correctly.
BC (Before COVID)
I stay in a fully furnished apartment in Joburg. It has all the necessary and unnecessary kinds of stuff. But, it doesn’t have a basic study table and a chair. Also, there’s no space to add any more things to my apartment. It is tightly packed. If you ask, there’s no actual need in the ordinary days, as I spend like 10–12 hrs in the office daily. I come back to my apartment to just cook, eat, read, watch, and sleep.
I didn’t see it coming
When the lockdown was announced, I thought it must be just for a month, and I can easily manage the working from home by using the couch and dining table to do work. Well, I was wrong. Things start to get messier day by day with a lot of meetings, work, and doing all the household activities. The couch and dining table doesn’t help. I lost my patience, and I rearranged a few things to get some space, and I ringed my landlord, asking for the table and a chair.
Measure app
She was curious, as she knows there’s no extra space. I sent her the below pic saying I found the space.
And, the next thing she asked for the measurements. I was like, what? I don’t have a measuring tape or a scale. Well, a simple common sense would suffice to say that I need a less than 1.5-meter length table. But, I didn’t want to take a chance, as it is a lockdown, and I don’t want to go forth and back if the table doesn’t fit into the given space.
So, how to give a precise measure? Then, I remembered that iOS has an inbuilt Augmented Reality Measure app to measure the surfaces and objects. I took it out, mapped the points. Voila! It gave me an exact measure mapping it to reality. I took a snap of it and shared it with my landlord.
After a few days, she delivered perfect fit furniture.
Let’s build
As designers, we might need to keep AR as one of the use cases in the problem definition. A simple idea like the Measure app can change the whole paradigm of user interaction, and solve the problem.
I have done some fundamental research on how designers can learn and build prototypes for their AR visions. Once my compilation is done, I will share it soon. If you got any learnings, please do share it in the comments.
Thanks for reading my boring lockdown experience.
Stay safe. Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
Few resources for starters,
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=reality+composer+apple+tutorial
