Augmented reality – what you can use it for?
If you’re asking yourself, what can I use augmented reality for? Is this technology right for my business? Is it the right time to augment my operations? You’re asking the wrong questions.
Instead, it would be best if you concentrate on finding the right partners in starting AR experiences with your business.
One thing is sure – AR has established in our world. It happened. It is done. No one can turn it back. Period!
Of course, we can argue are today’s applications of AR, giving the full potential of the technology. Is augmented reality business-suited? Because we usually recollect funny AR-filters from social media or connect it with games like Pokemon Go.
And your business is selling, offering services, manufacturing, distributing, shipping, mining, exploring, counting, and doing other “serious” actions, that are requiring well-established technologies, and are resistant to changes.
Folks, come on! Do you remember the beginnings of the Internet? Signed below, was printing it. It was easier, cheaper, and faster. It was like that: connect (time: usually around 2 mins); click the link; click print; wait until the preview with only text (no images!) uploads; print; disconnect. And mobile phones. Chatting through a device that weighed around 1 kg (2 pounds). One should have an arm out of steal to handle a more extended call. Fortunately, the battery cared about arms and didn’t allow on elongated calls.
Yet, we are in times where those two allow us to expand beyond the visible world. The Internet and a cell phone are our portals to the augmented reality.
Ok, we need to agree, AR is in the early stage of development. We still have some technical impediments that require improvements. It doesn’t mean that AR cannot be applied to businesses nowadays. Augmented reality is in the stage when it can help businesses of all sorts.
Like with every invention, AR should solve some problems. Mostly, we don’t notice the issues that we have, because we don’t know that there are solutions for them. We run our businesses. They absorb us, and we don’t have much time to scrutinize something new. Especially when it sounds so “extraterrestrial.” Augmenting reality, expanding the physical world, displaying computer-generated 3D models into a real-world, showing something that doesn’t exist.
Maybe, I’ll take a look at it somewhere in the future. It can wait. Really, can it?
Apart from the horrible situation that touches the entire world right now, do we have time to put AR away? Even in times of this frightful plague, when people are in lockdowns, so are businesses, and online is becoming our dailiness, could we ignore AR?
We agreed that AR is in the early stage. Therefore it won’t be a panacea for the entire business. It might be a little too soon, to migrate wholly to AR.
But, AR can help enterprises solve the problem. That’s why businesses should have a proper advisor, helper, facilitator, or whatever we call that person. It doesn’t matter whether it’s an internal or from an external organization individual. The one that will elucidate the values, benefits, and also tell about impediments, and limitations. With the adoption of every new thing (not only technology), is that we are afraid of the unknown.
That shouldn’t stop us from moving forward, making progress, because there might be someone else who might be fearless.
Of course, there’s no intention to threaten the-less-courageous, instead waking them up, encouraging them to ask questions, looking for improvements. The right questions will clarify the problem. Reacting to one problem at a time, and seeing benefits, will give another benefit. There’s usually a stereotype, that new technologies are pricey.
And, as we all know, there is always a wrong time for investments. No-one, who is sane, will tell you to go all-in in AR. One problem at a time. Improve one thing in your business with the AR, and collect the benefits. Thus, your next improvement will cost less than nothing.
It’s time to introduce industries that can search for AR-improvements. There will be no exaggeration in noting that literally, every sector can implement AR.
Starting from archeology, architecture, eCommerce, education, entertainment, gaming, healthcare, hospitality, industrial manufacturing, military, navigation, tourism, and trade – just to name a few – can benefit from AR.
It seems like it’s time to dig dipper and scrutinize applications in one of the above industries.
But it’s a story for the next time.
Folks have a good one!