With the recent surge in Smartphone take-up, and the seemingly mandatory combination of portable cameras and GPS receivers, the recent craze surrounding application development seems to be focusing around augmented reality.  But why should you care?  What value could this add to your business? And where on earth do you begin to create a viable app?  Read on to get the Big Orange guide to help you on your way.

First impressions

If you ask most people with first-hand experience what they think of when asked about mobile augmented reality – the general impression seems to be holding up your Smartphone’s camera and moving it around – finding specific points of interest based around a certain service within your area.  But if we match this up to the technical definition – that augmented reality is a technology that indeed enhances your real-world experience in some way by using the virtual -  this means you aren’t limited to one model, oriented around your camera!

Although this is probably the most exciting form of Augmented reality to the user, there are so many useful applications which simply utilise your location data in order to give you access to useful information.  For example, Google’s Places Directory for Android (http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/06/places-directory-app-for-android.html) provides a great repository of local services, all based on your location, and all filtered from pre-determined lists.  And whilst you could always argue that this would be a great thing to be tied into your camera – people often forget the usability of this, and that not everything should be simply dumped on the user via the camera immediately.  If I was using this app to search for nearby stores, and there happened to be a high street nearby, the visual clutter would make this in all likelihood unusable.  But that’s not to say that it can’t be done.  I tend to think of a simple rule when thinking about the usability of AR apps, users want to be guided!

A guided experience

If you think of most popular computer based experiences, they all tend to be in some way restricting the options available to the user.  To most people this immediately sounds like a bad thing.

But think of most modern touch interface devices.  Think of the increasingly limiting options available in even desktop operating systems.  But yet the overall quality of these systems and their interfaces is most definitely on the rise.  It’s my honest belief that people would rather have a ‘cool’ interface that appears uncluttered and smooth (iPad) vs. one with a multitude of options but rarely using most of them (a typical windows OS).  And this is no different when thinking about the design of your AR app.

Consider that sometimes less is more.  If I download an app which exclusively shows me nearby London underground stations (nearest tube from acrossair – http://www.acrossair.com/acrossair_app_augmented_reality_nearesttube_london_for_iPhone_3GS.htm) – I not only know that this is a specialist app with its own customised interface, and I can be certain that it provides me with accurate information on what I need to do – and in general these specialist apps may also provide additional options not available in a generic app such as Layar – (http://www.layar.com/) perhaps the ability to see not only the status of the station – but the ability to show me an alternative route to get to where I need to go with walking directions?

Nearest Tube from Cross Air

The Untapped potential

One thing I can’t stress enough here is that we have still only started to scratch the surface of what is capable in AR.  There seems to be a distinct lack of options in most apps, and considering the possibilities, that’s a real shame.  How about an AR exposition app which allowed you to book a session at a booth?  Or an app which allowed you to search for a product, then show you nearby products which actually have this item in stock, rather than just stores nearby which have an online store containing this item?  What if I could pre-order that product for collection with giftwrapping one mile away, and by the time I get there it’s ready to pick up, without me having had to arrange it with anyone?

I’m sure there are hundreds of far more interesting applications which you can think of, but what you may not realise is that the information needed for some of these possibilities may already be available!! And even if it’s not, it’s really not as hard as you might imagine.

The API gold mine

One thing you certainly may not realise is just how many interesting sources of data have been made publically available for you to use in your own applications, a lot of the time with very open commercial licenses.  And when combining data from multiple sources your abilities become truly awesome.  For example, one great resource for this is the programmable web (http://www.programmableweb.com/) – you can find information on there from handbag thefts and crime stats in your area, to nearby paintballing sites and information on the weather.  Why not combine them so you can book for a good day?  We would urge anyone considering creating an app to think about all the amazing possibilities here.

But what if you already have the information you want – or would like to utilise your own data? Thankfully modern tools couldn’t make this task easier.

Flying solo

With the wealth of tools available, it needn’t be a painful process to turn your data into geographical data for use in an AR app.  For example, by utilising Yahoo’s Placefinder within their geo apps suite (http://developer.yahoo.com/geo/) – you can quickly look up on the fly where your places of business reside in co-ordinates that mobile devices can then utilise via their own toolkits.

And what about then exposing this data back to the user?  The creation of web services is easier than ever, so why not think about hosting your own which can then be used by a mobile device? Modern technologies such as Soap mean you could have this data accessible in a very short space of time, and restricted with any security you want.

So, hope that has sparked your imagination with some of the possibilities for AR and mobile apps. If you need any help with them, do get in contact with us at www.bigorangesoftware.com.

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