Presented on March 4th, 2016 at Interaction16 in Helsinki, Finland. Until now, augmented reality has so far been mostly a sci-fi vision that overlays visual information to what we see in the physical world. It’s widely perceived as a “cool and interesting feature” for brands and advertising, but doesn’t have much practicality yet. To harness the real power of AR, which includes geolocation, image recognition, we believe that a more utilitarian visual search would be next. To design for such possibilities, we begin to question even the fundamental basis of AR. For example, what would AR become beyond a rich visual layer? Will this change people’s motivation and behavior to use AR? How can we redefine AR to be a tool to give augmented information on objects? And how we can speculate its usage in the future?

1. DESIGNING
The future of Augmented Reality
CARINA NGAI
UX Design Lead
Blippar Inc.
ngai.carina@gmail.com
@caweena #AR #ixd16
MARCH 2nd
, 2016
‘Off’ by Johan Rosenmunthe (2009)

2. About me:
UX Design Lead @Blippar
building an Augemented Reality platform that
enables users to interact with physical objects
in the digital world.
The Internet ON things.

3. What is Augmented Reality?

4. Minority Report, 2002

5. Iron Man 2, 2010

6. 64 years

7. 1957 Sensorama
A simulutor appartatus invented in 1957 by Morton Heilig

8. 1968 First head mounted display
The Sword of Damocles by Dr. Ivan Sutherland

9. We have come a long way
Steve Mann and Steven Feiner, wearables over 20 years (1980- late90s)

10. The pace of Augmented Reality
speeds up quickly the last few years
due to the prevalence of Smartphones

11. Maturity of AR
Google Glass (2013)
Carl Zeiss Smart Glasses (2016)

12. Meta @TED 2016

13. Meta @TED 2016

14. A Screenless Future

15. EXPECTATIONS
Technology Trigger
Trough of Disillusionment
Slope of Enlightenment
Peak of Inflated Expecations
Plateau of Productivity
TIME
Gartner Hype Cycle

16. EXPECTATIONS
Technology Trigger
Trough of Disillusionment
Slope of Enlightenment
Peak of Inflated Expecations
Plateau of Productivity
TIME
AR’s Hype Cycle
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
NOW

17. Prevalence of Smartphones
give rise to AR;
and the rise of AR
will eventually replace Smartphones

18. Advertising and Brands
Lucky Charms cereal, Blippar (2014)

19. Advertising and Brands
Rugby World Cup, Blippar (2015)

20. The breakthrough for AR to
become mainstream is
the moment this “Gimmicky” magic
becomes a practical day-to-day use.

21. AR brings at least
THREE types of changes
1. New ways to learn
2. New ways to access information
3. New ways to interact with the environment

22. 1. EDUCATION
Goodbye text-based,
linear learning model.
Redefine meaning of Classroom

23. Learning is no longer
a linear model
Text based fashion

24. Japanese Newspaper’s AR app
simplifies news for kids
Tokyo Shimbun + Dentsu, 2010

25. Disney’s 3D AR coloring book app
Disney Research, Oct 2015

26. Interactive Print
Layar, 2013

27. Discovery-based Learning

29. Turning the world around us into an
interactive learning environment.
Apply “Learning by Teaching” model

30. 2. BIG DATA
data collected from social media, sensors,
business transactions, machine-to-machine

31. Volume of data generated by
Internet of things
AR provides a way for people to access/visualize information
generated by IoT into digestable bites. It is contextual.

32. Meta info on everything
aka. Information Shadow (Mike Kuniavsky) or SPIME (Bruce Sterling)
i
i
i
i

33. From Branding and Advertisement
To Visual Search
To Visual Discovery
i
i
i
i

34. Health Reflection (Concept), Frog Design 2013

35. AR use in Enterprise Solution, SAP and Vuzix (since 2013)

36. AR-assisted Remote Guidance, xmreality (2015) Bosch Automotive Service Solutions (2014)
Entreprise AR

37. HOW IT WORKS
Augmented Reality relies on trigger points in the ‘real world’

QR Code AR Tag Image
Recognition
Facial
Recognition
GPS

38. Tourism

39. MOMA in New York (2014)
i

40. From Access Info. ___work
to Visual Discovery __play
The act of exploration is driven by our human nature of
curiosity, the desire for knowledge

41. 3. Virtual elements

42. Meta’s 3D sculpting (2014)

43. I. Gestural control
Metaphors like keyboards, screens are becoming irrelevant.
What are some of the natural gestures we perform subconsciously?
And can we map new interactions with these findings?
Feel without touching, Ultrahaptics (2015)

44. II. Virtual elements in a physical space
Create
Deposit
Retrieve

45. Technology = make easy to navigate
between places, not identify with a
place. Connection with the physical
environment requires us to do more
than simply passing through it.

46. Memories in location

47. What if AR is not just
an add-on experience,
but a neccessity?
What would that future look like?

48. In the developing countries,
mobile phones networks are cheaper to install than landlines
Sending airtime to sweethearts as an alternative currency in Afghanistan, by Jan Chipchase (2011)

49. AR is a very cheap alternative
to install building infrastructure
Imageine if we require all drivers to own AR lens, so they
can receive traffic related info. City will be able to gather
data and better control traffic.
+ =

50. How does this impact city planning?
What kind of new social behavior will form?
What kind of new businesses will emerge?

51. Iron Man 2, 2010
Implications of Technology
Affordability
Lifestyle
Need
Society
Global
Political impact
Perception
Humanity
Relationships

52. How can us, designers, see beyond
the making of “useful and delightful”
products?

53. Designers can provide a critical
perspectives for both micro and
macro views on the products,

54. To encourage a broader spectrum
of discussion.

55. Beyond the artifact overlay of text,
images, animations, and notifications,

56. is our curiosity, a strong motivation that’s
instinctively human.

57. The moment for AR to become wildly
accepted like smartphones, is the
moment we can humanize this
technology with design.

58. THANK YOU CARINA NGAI
ngai.carina@gmail.com
@caweena #AR #ixd16