How Augmented Reality Mobile Applications Change Everything

As the physical and virtual worlds become ever more connected, certain technologies are closing the gap between the two environs even further by blurring the edges between them.

Augmented reality (AR) is one particularly transformative concept, merging the digital with the physical in a way that serves to entertain, educate, and enhance our interactions with the world around us.

If augmented reality apps have so far passed you by, the following overview will help you get up to speed with AR and the possibilities it offers to you and your business. 

Mobile app development services increasingly include engineering of AR apps for smartphones, tablets, and wearable devices. By overlaying digital information onto a physical view of the user’s surroundings, these apps create enhanced user experiences. Such an app can be based on one of the three main methods for creating augmented reality.

Location-based AR: This method uses location features, such as the compass, GPS, and accelerometer, which you most likely have built into your mobile phone. Information from these sensors is used to display location data over the top of the image coming from the phone’s camera, as shown below.

Marker-based AR: This form of AR uses markers, such as QR codes, to trigger digital overlays onto a camera-view of the real world. This technique is also known as recognition-based AR. The overlaying information pops up when the application detects a marker via the device’s camera.

Markerless AR: This is the most sophisticated form of augmented reality. At its simplest, it involves the use of advanced algorithms to augment a camera image. At the more complex end of the markerless AR spectrum, epitomized by Google’s Tango model, solutions require specialized hardware and are not yet in widespread use.

AR may be associated largely with entertainment, but it is a technology with practical advantages far beyond those necessary for digital fun. Augmented reality apps have already gained a firm footing in the retail sector, and shoppers appear to be receiving it with marked enthusiasm.

For example, a study by Interactions found that 61% of consumers would prefer stores offering AR to outlets that have not yet deployed the technology, and 40% are even prepared to pay more for products if they can experience them first via retail AR technology.

The consumer perception of AR is one thing. But what are the concrete benefits? For the shopper, it’s all about information and, of course, fun. For the retailer though, improving the customer experience with augmented reality is a step on the path to increased profit.

As popular as AR is in retail, operators are only scratching the surface of what it can offer. In many ways, it is actually reducing the distinction between brick-and-mortar and electronic commerce, as retailers in both environments use AR apps to bring the store into the consumer’s home.

AR can help consumers make informed purchasing decisions without having to visit a physical retail outlet, or hunker down in front of a computer for hours of research. Take the case of a mobile retail app that allows cosmetics shoppers to apply virtual beauty products to their own selfie-shots—just to see how well the real products would suit them. That’s exactly what they can do with the Visual Artist app by Sephora, which also features makeup tutorials to help consumers get the best from the retailer’s brands.

A homemaker can choose items of furniture from a retailer’s catalog and, using his or her phone-camera, place them in different locations in a room to see how they look and fit. This is the premise behind IKEA Place, the Swedish furniture giant’s AR catalog app. IKEA Place helps shoppers virtually try items of furniture in their homes, before seamlessly directing them to IKEA’s ecommerce site to complete their purchases.

While not quite ready for primetime, new AR developments will soon make it possible to design an entire kitchen from a retailer’s product range by overlaying 3D images of units and appliances onto the camera-view of the physical room-space.

When today’s consumers do get out of their houses to the high street or mall, they want it to be as much an adventure as a shopping trip. Augmented reality, along with other technologies new to traditional retail, such as Bluetooth low energy beacons and RFID tags, is able to provide that sense of being immersed in a special experience.

The experience starts with app engagement at home and continues into the store itself, where shoppers can point their phone-cameras at areas or items and see prices, discounts, and promotions displayed on their screens. They may even be able to enjoy a gamified shopping trip, in which a hunt with the camera may track down a marker unlocking prizes or exclusive offers.

However, augmented reality in-store is not limited to downloadable apps, because the IoT is enabling more and more commercial hardware to display digital information to shoppers. Examples include fitting room mirrors with the AR functionality, which let apparel-shoppers see and try virtual items to match and coordinate with the garments they are physically trying on.

As well as engaging those already planning to purchase, augmented reality helps retailers to catch consumers’ attention earlier in the customer journey. Some brick-and-mortar stores are deploying AR window displays, which can immerse passers-by in interactive advertising campaigns.

Retailers that have already used AR interactive advertising displays include John Lewis in London, UK (Smart TV campaign using TVs and speakers in store windows) and Net-a-Porter, whose campaign for a new fashion collection utilized AR displays in storefronts around the world.

To illustrate just how limitless the potential for augmented reality may be, one final retail example is worthy of special note. China’s biggest online grocer, Yihaodian, which is majority-owned by Walmart, uses an AR app to provide a traditional-style shopping experience in over 1,000 parking lots, parks and tourist spots. In fact, inexplicably, there’s even a Yihaodian supermarket in the middle of Tiananmen Square.

Invisible to the naked eye, these stores are nevertheless very real, and exist in vivid living color for anyone with the Yihaodian app on their mobile device. With the app activated, users can walk through the aisles displayed on their screen, tapping the items they wish to buy. Finally, these open-air virtual shoppers can check out and pay online, after which their purchases will be delivered to their homes.

The idea may sound quirky, and it’s easy to wonder why anyone would want to go outside in order to shop online. But then, millions of phone owners go out to chase 3D virtual creatures around, so why not make some of that time productive, by combining it with a bit of grocery shopping?

It wasn’t so long ago that virtual reality was earmarked as the true future of immersive digital experiences, but the hype over VR has abated somewhat of late. In the meantime, augmented reality is taking big strides into the future. This is perhaps because unlike VR—which places the user in a wholly artificial environment—AR integrates the virtual and physical worlds dynamically and can be used anywhere.

This makes AR a feasible everyday source of entertainment, knowledge, and information. Perhaps the best thing to happen for AR would be the mass adoption of wearable technology, especially glasses, as that kind of hardware makes AR interaction more natural.

Indeed, a Silicon Valley startup Magic Leap is staking its future on a harmonious pairing of glasses and AR software, with plans to market a visual and auditory experience it calls “mixed reality.” So in the near future, we may see headgear begin to replace the smartphone as the must-have mobile device.