In the London borough of Southwark, City Insights Ltd is seeding signs with a mobile call-to-action, leading the passerby to time shift reality.
The yellow disks, as seen above, have popped up in 40 locations across the SE1 borough as part of the London Festival of Architecture. Each sign is strategically placed to note that something conspicuous has happened close by and direct people to a mobile web page where passersby can read all about it.
Keep a sharp eye out for the disks, anyone spotting them can get quick mobile access to stories such as the Red Cross Street cemetery for prostitutes, the Great Fire of Tooley Street and the origins of the Design Museum.
Mobile phones let us tap into historical information about a specific place. We may physically navigate our cities in the present, but digitally annotated reality will provide us a view into their past. GRAFFYARD, Streetmuseum, and The World Park all demonstrate this idea well.
For the 2010 Wimbledon Championships, IBM is providing mobile users with yet another example of augmented reality.
IBM will allow tennis fans to see through walls and never miss a big point again. Its 'IBM Seer' mobile application will combine augmented reality with live location-based video streams of all showcourt matches and 'busy areas' such as the Aorangi Terrace (aka Henman Hill), and the taxi queues.
Augmented reality is most often considered as the visual layering of information over the real world. Apps like IBM's continue to roll out; Layar, the popular AR platform, just signed deals to be included on 1 in 3 smartphones worldwide. But many of these are branded cookie cutter apps, leveraging new technology to build buzz. Look at Stella's AR app for example, how many people really use it to bar hop? Does it provide enough utility to justify development? Not all information is best represented through visual augmentation.
So what happens when the novelty wears off? The potential for annotating reality is huge and technological developments will only take it to the next level. We need to focus on behavior and begin thinking creatively about desirable application. We need to consider situational motivation and provide visualized information accordingly. What would entertain, inform, or enable an individual in a particular context? How would this tie into positioning or brand meaning?
Design Observer has published a fascinating two part essay on augmented reality, the warping of space and time, and how mobile is changing humanity.
The contemporary convergence of mobile phone, camera, wireless Internet and satellite communication — the key ingredients of the digital handheld — accelerates the reconstitution of place from real, occupied space to a collage of here and there, past and present. But digital technology’s effects do not only blast us out of place; they also bore us into the sights right in front of us — those in our viewfinder. Our sense of place is augmented by information wired from the World Wide Web.
The article takes a deep dive into history to put our present behaviors into context. Continue reading here: Part 1 | Part 2
In an attempt to push the augmented reality space forward, Bruno Uzzan, CEO of Total Immersion has proposed a standardized logo for identifying AR enabled experiences.
Dubbed, AR Plus (or AR+), the logo is designed to be a beacon that will signify when an interactive augmented experience has been implemented into an application. In the same way standardized USB or DVD devices brand the same logo on their devices and products, Total Immersion hopes AR developers will place the AR+ logo on their products.
At times, standardization and industry collaboration are what push a technology forward. Japan's mobile industry has thrived because of the tight relationship between carriers and device manufacturers. Uzzan believes that AR+ is what is needed to break AR into the mainstream. Creating a graphic language for these sometimes abstract interactions could help educate consumers and encourage application development. Just think about the universal symbols we now see across the web to indicate things like email, print, share, etc. Being able to instantly recognize something's function makes for a much quicker and more seamless user experience.
Learn more about AR+ and Total Immersion's proposed guidelines here.
We observe emerging mobile technology, cultural trends, and consumer behavior, then connect the dots to generate mobile strategy and intelligence for leading global brands. This is what we're seeing and thinking.
