We are already trained for an Augmented Reality
How cameras, Instagram and SnapChat have prepped us for an emergent social norm
It’s fun to consider those few things in life that are widely scorned and tutted at by indignant opinion pieces, yet which persist. That’s where we as a society are testing our boundaries on a massive scale and seeing what sticks.
From the sea of phones at a concert, to the devices blocking your view of the octopus at the aquarium. From the person walking down the street FaceTime-ing with a friend, to the yelpers studying digital reviews alongside physical menus. We, in a relatively short amount of time, have become numb to this pattern of experiencing and capturing life through an outstretched phone (or tablet if you really want to grind peoples’ gears).
I used to be one of those people at the aquarium wondering why the hell people were taking TERRIBLE photos of a hermit crab (with flash, through thick glass) when they had ZERO intent to print/frame and would NEVER think to actually buy a professionally shot version of their same composition. Why didn’t they just watch a documentary on fish from the comfort of their own home if they were going to experience the aquarium through a 3.5" digital screen.
Our usage of the camera capability of our phones has long exceeded their utility and quality. Collectively, we’ve successfully navigated the years where phone cameras were inferior, and the pre-Instagram years where there was basically nothing to do with the photos and footage shot on them. We’ve exhibited remarkable tolerance as the industry has improved, without a clear end goal in sight.
We’ve already done the classic technology thing of exceeding the capability of the analog equivalent. Now we get to explore capabilities beyond our wildest analog dreams
The Gateway Drug
Ok. So phones at arms length are A-OK in literally every circumstance.
But AR is quite another thing. AR isn’t about capture, it’s about augmentation. It’s going to take some getting used to, right?
Enter SnapChat!
SnapChat has positioned itself as the technology bridge between camera and AR. Hitting the perfect early adopter demographics, focussed on self(ies), and including training disguised as the cute ears and expression triggered actions. We’ll look back on SnapChat as an inflection point.
ARKit
At WWDC, Apple announced ARKit — a library of developer capabilities aimed at making AR accessible to all. We’ve been approached several times to make SnapChat like experiences for clients, and the reality is that SnapChat set the bar so high, it has been an intimidating arena to enter. With ARKit, the whole development community can push on AR and take it beyond face filters.
The output from the first weeks of developer experimentation with ARKit have been dazzling and offer a glimpse of our near future.
Menu Yelpers:
Aquarium photo shooters/art gallery augmentation:
City exploration — perhaps walk a London street as imagined during the Black Death:
Check @MadeWithARKit for more of this amazing content.
The future isn’t arms length devices
Google Glass failed. But it was well intentioned. It changed too much all at once and society tends to deride that which is too strange or unfamiliar.
We’ll ultimately end up with something more comfortable, immersive and novel as an augmented interface to our worlds — perhaps it’s wind up being glasses after all. And the voice assistant training we’re getting at a massive scale with Siri, Alexa etc. is going to be a big part of this. But it will take time for us to get familiar enough with AR, that we:
A. want a product designed specifically for that purpose
B. want people doing it around us without the outstretched arm as a signal/identifier
AR is going to be huge. This whole time we’ve been unwittingly training for a future where our devices don’t just capture our experiences, but augment them. And it’s arriving this Fall.
