Tips for designing an augmented reality project

I always find that the best people to ask about designing a project are ones who’ve already done so — multiple times. The team at Designteam have designed AR experiences for a range of big companies, even putting together their own AR platform. Here’s their advice for designing an AR project.

Designteam has put together experiences for exhibitions and trade shows for 25 years. As a way of innovatively showcasing their client’s offerings and encouraging people to their stands, they turned to augmented reality. Victor David, the marketing manager for both the tradeshow and augmented reality side of the company, and Daniel Condon, their senior designer, were kind enough to sit down with me and share what they’ve learned around AR.

Here’s a video of what they’ve been up to so far:

So, the all-important question is — what should you keep in mind when putting together your own augmented reality experiences like the ones in the video above?

Clients may not know what AR is

An important point to remember when working with clients on an augmented reality project is that they often aren’t familiar with the medium and can get confused — most clients have heard about the tech but don’t know how it can help them. Not to mention, many currently mix up augmented reality with fully immersive virtual reality.

“Once we sent a video of an iPad with a mock-up version of the AR experience on it to show the client our progress, they thought that the end product was going to be a video.” – Victor David

The client mentioned above genuinely thought that the augmented reality was actually just 3D in a video. It was a surprising misunderstanding Victor and the team didn’t see coming! An important lesson — don’t assume your client understands what you’re on about when you talk about augmented reality. Chances are, they don’t quite understand.

Victor says, “clients are often used to thinking within a certain set of solutions to solve their marketing goals — AR is often not one of them. Not because they don’t want to or it’s not effective (it’s quite the contrary!), but because they just have never thought of it being a marketing tool.”

However, things are in fact improving, just as I hoped they would! Victor pointed out something quite promising:

“Luckily with the rise of Pokémon Go, my life is getting easier when explaining what AR is.”

The more augmented reality apps hit the mainstream, the easier this will all be to explain to people!

A few examples of Designteam’s AR work in action!

The key to selling AR — get the client to try it firsthand

Victor says that the best way to approach explaining augmented reality to someone is getting them to actually try it. Once they see it, their minds can start to explore the possibilities:

“The key to selling AR is getting the client to try it and imagine what it can do for them. While showing them the wonders of AR, keep it simple.” – Victor David

So before you try to sell an augmented reality concept to a client — put augmented reality apps in their hands and show them what’s possible first.

Designing a good augmented reality app

Once you’ve got the client interested, an essential next step is to build an AR app that is well designed and showcases the potential of the platform. Remember, you are representing the industry and its technological potential. It’s a lot of responsibility, which is why I asked Daniel Condon, a senior designer at Designteam, for his tips on what makes a good AR app.

Daniel believes there are two fundamental aspects to a well designed augmented reality application:

1. The story you are trying to tell.
2. How the user will interact with it.

The story

Daniel explains this using the analogy of a children’s picture book —

“By breaking down the client’s story/message into small bite-sized scenes for the user, it allows them to explore the excitement of AR and take in the message at their own pace, much like a child navigates the pages in a picture book.” – Daniel Condon

User interaction

Following along with the picture book analogy, Daniel says that user interaction is like the “turning of the page”:

“Once the user has finished exploring the first scene or first bit of info, what is going to be the cue that encourages them to move through the story? Is it a 3D element in the scene? Or a UI element such as a button that keeps them moving through their journey?” – Daniel Condon

Try to consider these two points within your user’s context. Daniel provides examples of user context to keep in mind such as location, physical environment, lighting, attention span and so on. Designteam always look to “tailor the story structure and interactions of each experience to best suit the most likely user scenario.”

Things to avoid in an AR design

While it’s great to hear about the best approaches to design a good AR app, often there are common guidelines and things to avoid which newcomers to the space figure out by trial and error. Why not skip that by asking a team that’s already been there, done that? Daniel gave me a few of their guidelines they use when building AR applications:

• Try to avoid placing any text in 3D space — “Trying to read text from any other angle other than front on becomes quite tricky and 3D letters are almost illegible, so if possible, it is always best to isolate text as a supplementary UI feature”.
• Think about the user’s screen size and environment — “Avoid creating experiences at scales that don’t translate well to the user’s screen size or physical environment. If a user has to stand 10 meters back just to try and fit the whole experience inside the viewport of their camera feed, then you’re doing AR wrong.”
• Avoid information overload — “Going back to the picture book analogy, don’t overload the user with information, they’re going to be pretty distracted just moving around and checking out the cool AR you’ve put together so keep things simple and let them play!”
• Avoid gimmicky usage — “AR isn’t a medium for everyone or every brand. To further the value of AR as a medium, we all must steer clear of doing AR for its ‘gimmicky’ impact factor and find real scenarios where AR can add to the understanding and engagement of users with a more meaningful and seamless integration of the new technology.” Basically, if the story isn’t a compelling one that works in AR, don’t try to force it. Find a new angle or rethink the platform.

Presenting an augmented reality experience

Once you’ve got a prototype ready to show a client, Victor and Designteam have one key concept they keep in mind above all else:

“Leave all the technical details and background info on how you built it for later if needed. They buy for the experience they get, not for the technicalities that it is built on. This is key.” – Victor David

Basically, Victor pointed out that “people like to play with geeky stuff, provided they don’t need to get their head around something perceived difficult. You basically need to present it ‘ready to go’”. The background behind it all, technical details and so on don’t mean anything to most people. If you built it with Vuforia, Unity, a certain API… whatever — the client often doesn’t really care. Don’t lead with that info — lead with what the app can do and get it into their hands!

Managing an augmented reality project is just like any other

If you’ve managed other projects before, your skills are transferrable when it comes to augmented reality apps. Much of the process is the same for an AR project as it is other projects.

“Managing a project for AR doesn’t differ much from managing a website project or even a physical product. You just need to explain it well to the prospect and manage expectations.”

Often, there is scope creep in augmented reality projects too — when clients decide they’d like new functionality to be added on top of the previously agreed specs. However, Victor has found that updating an app “with AR can be easier to change stuff than it is with website functionality.”

So then, how do Designteam build their AR apps?

Even though it’s not something quite as important for clients, it’s always fascinating from a developer perspective to know what platforms are being used in the wild today.

It turns out, Designteam have their own private augmented reality platform they use called Spot AR which runs on Unity. They also can use Vuforia and CAD files from clients. Clients can use Spot AR on a month-to-month basis without having to build their own app from scratch. They can:

• pull up a 3D model that moves
• enter a 360 photo or video
• use it to launch a VR experience
• capture leads or sell tickets to an event

One pretty neat example of an augmented reality app they’ve built with Spot AR was for the Virgin Australia airline. It showcased a new business class seat in 3D which reclined and moved just as the real one did. People could explore what the new seat looked like in a miniature version on their table!

Thank you to Victor and the team at Designteam for sharing their experiences designing augmented reality applications as an agency! You can find out more about Designteam at their website at designteam.com.au! If you’d like to get in touch with them, you can contact their Sydney office on (02) 9263 9400 or contact Victor directly via VictorD@designteam.com.au.