How can we take advantage of augmented reality?

What’s be­hind aug­ment­ed re­al­i­ty, and how can we use it most ef­fi­cient­ly for our pur­pos­es? We asked an ex­pert and ob­tained some sim­ple tips. Here you go:

At first glance, the term ap­pears rather odd, for how can you aug­ment some­thing as re­al as re­al­i­ty? But it’s ac­tu­al­ly not that strange. Be­cause of­ten, it sim­ply means the vi­su­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of in­for­ma­tion, i.e. the en­hance­ment of im­ages or videos us­ing ad­di­tion­al com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed da­ta or vir­tu­al ob­jects by means of over­lays or su­per­im­po­si­tions. Wikipedia has a sim­ple ex­am­ple: when broad­cast­ing foot­ball match­es, aug­ment­ed re­al­i­ty in­volves over­lay­ing dis­tances with the help of a cir­cle or line dur­ing free kicks.

And aug­ment­ed re­al­i­ty (AR) is al­so ide­al for mar­ket­ing, with en­tire cat­a­logues be­ing brought to life via apps, for ex­am­ple. With games, in par­tic­u­lar, it cre­ates the wow fac­tor and is a lot of fun.

Is that all?

That’s all well and good, but what else? Of course there’s much more to AR. What does it re­al­ly achieve, apart from the wow fac­tor, and what should we pay at­ten­tion to when im­ple­ment­ing a so­lu­tion? Ac­cord­ing to Matthias Känzig, CEO of Takon­di, there are five key points:

1. Ex­pe­ri­ence

   Make sure that users can en­joy a good ex­pe­ri­ence and achieve use­ful re­sults. They ex­pect this, just as with web­sites and apps.

2. Suit­able for main­stream op­er­a­tion
   It’s im­por­tant that the so­lu­tion can op­er­ate on as many de­vices as pos­si­ble, is easy to use and can be in­te­grat­ed in­to the cus­tomer jour­ney. Here too, a good ex­pe­ri­ence is key.
3. Prof­itabil­i­ty
   The so­lu­tion should be able to grow in line with your needs. Ide­al­ly, ex­ist­ing con­tent can be used and don’t for­get to in­te­grate your brand im­age in­to your AR world. This cre­ates recog­ni­tion and there­fore added val­ue.
4. Added val­ue
   Your AR so­lu­tion should be re­gard­ed and ap­plied as a fur­ther dig­i­tal touch point when com­mu­ni­cat­ing with your tar­get au­di­ences, there­by en­abling you to cor­rect­ly use and in­te­grate it at ap­pro­pri­ate points of the cus­tomer jour­ney.
5. In­vest­ment
   
   It’s im­por­tant to in­vest in tech­nol­o­gy and im­ple­ment projects. But this alone does not achieve a great deal. You should al­so think about sales and mar­ket­ing.

AR ap­pli­ca­tions, along with gam­i­fi­ca­tion el­e­ments and the use of apps at con­fer­ences, are all part of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion and/or the way we han­dle dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. The more we know about it, the bet­ter and more ef­fi­cient­ly we can use it. And the greater your firm’s suc­cess.

Bild: Bradley Hook CC0