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Digital agencies

Starting a career in augmented reality

Kicking off career in AR

Augmented reality is steadily claiming its spot not only in the digital universe but also in the career field. How can you leverage your existing skills to start a new career in AR? Here are seven smart ways to begin with.

You’ve always wanted to make your own augmented reality app. But the time, money, and coding skills required to build one have kept you from realizing your dream. Or what if you’ve been successfully building AR social filters and now consider turning it into a full time job? There are many ways to level up your career and kick off a promising future as an augmented reality expert. 

– Start off as a junior developer, then move into AR

To make the most of your career, you’ll want to start off as a junior developer, then move into augmented reality. 

Some skills you’ll want to develop include: 

  • Programming. The first step on this path is learning how to program in a language that can be used for both AR and mobile app programming. If you’re not sure where to start, take a look at some online resources like Udemy or FreeCodeCamp. 
  • 3D Modeling and Graphic Design. Understanding how 3D models work is essential if you want to create compelling digital objects for users. You should also have an eye for design if you intend on creating user interfaces or other visual elements that are essential parts of any great experience using AR technology. Learning how 3D models work is easy with online courses like those offered by Google’s Udacity program. There are also plenty of free resources available online. 

– Level up from game designer to AR game designer

There are many ways to level up your career as a game designer and kick off a promising future as an AR game designer. 

It’s important to understand the difference between AR and traditional video games. Video games that use AR technology allow players to see their surroundings while playing the game on their device or computer screen. In other words, they interact with virtual objects that appear in real-life settings while still seeing through their physical eyes rather than looking at a screen alone. 

This form of gameplay has been used for years by Nintendo’s Pokemon Go and Microsoft’s HoloLens headset but has only recently gained popularity among gamers worldwide. To kick off the transition, dig into Augmented Reality for Everyone course that FreeCodeCamp provides.

– Consider becoming a 3D modeler

It’s a good starting point for anyone looking to get into augmented reality, 3D printing, CAD, VR and animation. Your skill set will most likely already has a lot of crossover with the gaming industry and engineering fields.

Learn more about creating 3D content for augmented reality

– Get creative with your experience in graphic design

Being a graphic designer can be a great entry point into augmented reality. Graphic designers are skilled in visual communication and often have experience with tools like Photoshop and Illustrator, which are used to create 3D models. This can come in handy when designing AR experiences because these apps and games often use 3D models as visuals. 

Graphic designers can also take their skills in designing 2D layouts and apply them to creating the user interface (UI) for an app or game—for example, designing buttons on the screen or menus that users will interact with using gestures on their smartphones or tablets. Keep this in mind when applying for jobs at companies that create AR applications! 

– Work on your design skills to become an industrial designer

If you want to work in augmented reality, there’s no better place to start than with industrial design. As an industrial designer, you’ll be tasked with creating objects that are functional and appealing, but also new ways to use technology that most people haven’t considered before. This requires a great deal of creativity and imagination—but also means that once you’ve got the hang of things as an industrially-trained designer, it will be easier for your ideas to get off the ground. 

If this sounds like something that interests you, consider getting into industrial design. You’ll need some training in engineering first (which is always helpful), but then all it takes is hard work and perseverance on your part. 

As augmented reality continues to grow, there are many different types of jobs that you can do with the technology. Here are some extra ideas to explore:

Business managers are responsible for overseeing an AR company’s overall operations and ensuring it is profitable. They might be tasked with hiring employees or finding new ways to promote the company’s products.


Content developers create software programs or other content for AR applications. This type of work includes writing code, building 3D models for games and apps, creating graphics for game engines like Unity or Unreal Engines, conceptualizing ideas for apps and games through sketches or illustrations, creating user manuals and instruction guides, managing databases used in development projects. 

According to Karl Hughes, there are even more career paths that software developers can take.

Looking to get started? Here are even more resources:

With all of the technology and growth in augmented reality, you can make a career out of it. We hope this article has given you some insight into which skills will help you succeed in the field and how to start building those skills today. Remember that it takes time and effort to build a successful career, but with persistence and passion for what you do (and no matter what age), it is possible!

We’re all about the future of augmented reality, and we want you to be a part of it! 

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Categories
Digital agencies

4 ways AR transforms the customer journey

The digitalization of the customer journey is an inevitable leap for every brand. AR is here to help!

Digital transformation has been fueled by a series of events in recent years, making brands think on their feet and reactively adapt strategies on all levels. The customer journey has become one of the areas in the limelight.

While the pandemic imposed restrictions on daily lives and affected purchasing habits, the online dwelling time has propelled, giving the marketers a solid reason to take a closer look at emerging technologies such as AR.

Brands worldwide show that digitalization of the customer journey is a necessary step. Luckily, advanced technological solutions are here to help make a leap. Thanks to its versatility, AR solutions gradually become a vital component in accompanying the customer throughout the entire sales funnel and beyond.

Awareness: advertising of tomorrow

Starting from the very top of the funnel, marketers could use AR to boost brand awareness and customer engagement.

Let’s take advertising. AR-powered ads that we know and love rolled out just a couple of years ago. Snapchat pioneered programmatic AR ads in 2017. This pushed other social media giants like Facebook and Instagram to catch up on the trend and present their take on using AR in advertising. According to Digiday, TikTok gets ready to introduce a new AR ad format soon.

What started as a beta-testing for selecting industries, was rapidly scaled and implemented on a broader scope, based on raving feedback of advertisers and end-users. As AR technology becomes progressively light-weight, various platforms can integrate solutions without additional workload.

For customers, “seeing is believing” is synonymous with AR commerce. As brands tell their stories in new ways, customers experience products and services in simulations that feel real. With social distancing coming to stay for a while, trying things out through AR or learning about the product without physically visiting the store becomes vital.

The transit through customer journey stages gets streamlined and leads the prospects directly to the next stage.

See how SparxWorks makes it easy for brands to showcase their products

Interest: a new dimension of customer experience

After the attention is caught, how do the brands spark interest and make a customer spend time exploring more? Immersive AR solutions make it possible. Advertisers who chose to tune in, receive a new toolset, powerful enough to flip the established paradigm of customer-brand interaction.

The AR industry provides technology to seamlessly create new customer and brand experiences on a larger scale.

A bonus for agencies and marketers is the high adaptivity of the AR solutions, meaning they could be customized for each industry’s specifics. Powered by cutting-edge AR products, brands leverage their ROI and supply customers with digital content that can be directly engaged with.

The level of interaction with such content is unprecedented and goes well beyond reading and liking. Given that augmented reality allows adding any digital content to the real-life environment, it sparks genuine emotions that no video or image could beat.

Desire: expanding functionality

Growing in functionality year to year, AR moves from a single-use experience to becoming a connecting tissue for many uprising technologies – such as AI, machine learning, and robotics.

Being less hardware dependent than VR, augmented reality proves to be a go-to solution that offers a lot of ways for deployment while being more user-friendly and highly customizable. Customers already carry AR-powered devices in their pockets (aka smartphones), creating an additional touchpoint to deliver experiences anytime.

Thanks to AR features such as Object Tracking, users can freely move around and actively interact with 3D content. Instant tracking allows the experience to take place literally everywhere – from the screen of the user’s smartphone or laptop to physical objects around, like buildings and city infrastructure. AR solutions open a new dimension of indoor and outdoor advertising.

Action: show and shop

Now, that the customer is attracted and engaged, how can we harness that attention and convert it to engagement and sales? AR comes in handy not only to present the product but also to add branded content of various complexity, showcasing product functionality and innovation.

With 3D instructional overlays, customers can visualize and learn more in real-time: be it a particular campaign or brand’s mission. Imagine allowing customers to try things virtually. Let’s say, verify if a piece of furniture fits in the room.

With AR, you can go a step further and even guide the assembling of the product. The augmented reality experience can spread throughout the entire customer journey, creating a comprehensive roadmap for brands to act on.

Design Ar GIF by Wikitude - Find & Share on GIPHY

Augmented reality solutions have the power to reimagine the customer journey as we know it. From harnessing customers’ attention by creating unique experiences that spark a genuine interest to boosting engagement and driving sales – this technology has it under its belt.

How are you leveraging AR in your customer journey? Let us know in the comments below.

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Education

How AR adds value in the COVID-19 world

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic forced the whole world into the new realm of remote work. While we seek new ways of staying connected through tech, AR shows its potential by bringing connectivity to a whole new level.

In the past months, we’ve seen the world change in the blink of an eye. With sudden lockdowns caused by COVID-19 across the globe, many were imposed to isolate and build new remote daily routines from scratch. What seemed unusual just a month ago turned into an everyday necessity. 

During this time we mastered virtual meet-ups not only on a technical but also on a human level. We realized that online conversations can be just as valuable as face to face ones. Countless Zoom and Skype calls rapidly took new shapes and meanings as they substituted our daily stand-ups and Friday get-togethers. Many employees appreciated the opportunity to cut the costs and time spent in daily commutes while their managers had to embrace the whole work from home situation and learn to build new workflows around it. 





And just like that, we found ourselves in the process of change, creating a new remote reality. While the tech we are using is not necessarily new,  it’s the newly developed attitude towards technology that changes the rules. With its unleashed potential, augmented reality becomes a technology that takes our daily experiences to the next level. And although the technology has been around for a while, its spread got catalyzed during the pandemic. Suddenly, the COVID-19 pandemic made the impact AR can bring crystal clear.

Here are 4 areas where augmented reality brings real transformation:

Shopping 

Being constantly concerned about hygiene is a trait of the new normal, that will stay with us for a while. As retail players hectically try to invent new ways to boost sales during the COVID-19 pandemic, try-before-you-buy AR apps and masks gain solid traction with social media platforms playing a significant role in making these solutions popular.  In the next few months, we will see even more helpful “try-before-you-buy” services, allowing customers to easily try any product – from sunglasses to a new piece of furniture. In the long run, the retail industry will fully adept AR as it proves to be indispensable in providing customized experiences and solutions.  

Safe reopening

Safe reopening is also becoming an important topic. Visitors will appreciate a tech that helps estimate how many people are already inside the museum and whether it makes a visit with a safe distance feasible. And while waiting outside, augmented reality allows visitors to have an engaging experience without even entering the building. For office buildings and academic institutions, AR can help keep people informed on new regulations and get questions answered about any COVID-19 response policies. See how Niagara University helps 3,300 undergraduate students stay safe in this year’s fall term.



Education

Schools and universities had to embrace the e-learning, as well as the ever-present possibility to go into the new lockdown on short notice. Remote learning and impromptu homeschooling demand digital tools to keep students connected, engaged, and motivated. Augmented reality could do the trick by providing new engaging ways to learn. Even the dry facts like the periodic system receive a new flair as students can interact with molecules. In Japan, kids can already use an augmented card game to learn how to code. Even printed materials get an upgrade with digital content or augmented animations that bring a foreign language to life.

Customer service

Is the vacuum cleaner broken during the pandemic? No clue what the error code is about? Customer service calls (especially in the context of a lockdown) can be long and tedious. And let’s face it, troubleshooting over the phone can be confusing and ineffective. Imagine that the manufacturer of your Roomba would be able to send an expert virtually to your house?  All you’ll need to do is to point the camera of your smartphone to the device to fix the problem. The expert then sees what you see and gives you clear and helpful instructions remotely on the next steps. These are only a few of the possible case uses of augmented reality in our daily lives.



Such effective AR solutions receive deserved recognition due to the limits the pandemic imposes. As the situation cools down, we will find the ways back into real life. We’ll most likely take the winning solutions with us to enjoy.

In the long run, AR proves to be a technology that helps us make the real-world better – by bringing more value to our daily experiences.