Augmented Reality (AR) is making waves in the mobile and tablet world. Here’s one definition: “It is a live, direct or indirect, view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, video, graphics or GPS data.”
There has been much buzz around this technology in the printing industry, but marketers are still playing around with AR. Like other integrated campaigns, there must be some value provided for the consumer. The biggest benefit of uncovering the tricks to AR is to bring additional and exciting content to its audience.
One app that we’ve been paying close attention to is Aurasma. (It’s free!) Aurasma allows you to capture an image on your device, and then gives you the choice of a virtual image or animation to lay over the original you captured. Confused? Try it out for yourself!
Here’s how:
Step 1: Download the Aurasma app on your smartphone or tablet (Search for Aurasma Lite)
Step 2: Hold your device in front of the image we provided for you and the app will read the image (Keep a steady hand for quicker results).
Step 3: Choose the virtual image you’d like. You can even play around with the search option to see what wild animations Aurasma has to offer
Step 5: Name your “aura”
Step 6: Test it!
Step 7: Publish it and share with you friends!
See how easy Augmented Reality is?
If you want to see our experiment, check out our article on Direct Mail for Generation Y and see what pops up in the image.
To learn more about this, check out Aurasma.com
Written by Maggie Young
Maggie Young
Ikea, with millions of catalog subscribers, are taking advantage of this technology in their newest catalog.