Your New Secret Weapon to Maximize Customer Experience

Augmented reality (AR) provides a live view of a physical, real-world environment, the elements of which are augmented by computer-generated input such as information, sound, video, graphics, or GPS data. AR has been in existence for quite a while, but is becoming more pervasive in our society. It’s a game changer, offering many untapped opportunities some companies are just beginning to explore.

AR isn’t necessarily something new, but thanks to the predictable changes caused by the exponential growth of the Three Digital Accelerators: processing power, storage and bandwidth, the potential implications of its use today and in the near future certainly are. Some companies began using augmented reality decades ago, setting the trend for its application in a variety of industries. A great example of this can be found in the aeronautics industry and the development of new technology therein. In the 1990s, Boeing used augmented reality with head mounted displays to aid in aircraft wiring. The person performing the complex wiring on an aircraft would have a screen in front of them, and overlaid onto that screen would be the data showing where to put the wires, what the right color wires were, what the wire did, etc. This application of AR by Boeing effectively made an extremely complex and demanding task — the wiring of an aircraft, which is essential for just about every facet of flight capability, including performance and safety from takeoff to landing — clearer, more easily understood, and easier to facilitate. With their early use of AR, Boeing put themselves ahead of the game in aeronautics, creating a trend other companies in the industry were sure to follow.

Today, however, AR isn’t just for complex technical tasks. It’s something within everyone’s reach, thanks to various smartphone apps. For example, I got my first AR app for my smartphone in 2010. The app works with my phone’s camera — when I aim the phone at a distant mountain range, the AR app gives me the names of the mountains overlaid on the image. I touch a button and can get more information about the mountains, including the elevation, natural flora and fauna, and the overall topography of the mountain range. How is this possible? The app utilizes a slew of different technical facets of a smartphone — like the phone’s GPS, digital compass, and motion sensors — to detect where I’m pointing. It then uses the internet to leverage this raw data and give me real-world, usable information. It’s ingenious in its simplicity, embodying the confluence of all the various technologies that make the smartphone what it is and turning that confluence into something palpable and real for smartphone users.

Now, let’s take the application of AR a step further, to what we’ll be seeing in the near future as more sensors are used in smartphones. Suppose you’re walking down a busy shopping district searching for a shoe store that sells high-end Italian men’s and women’s shoes. You may even have a particular brand in mind. You could point your phone’s camera at the street ahead of you, and the AR app will overlay the names of each store that sells shoes and provide a list of which brands each store carries. You could then click on an information button to get store hours.

And if the AR app can do this outside the store, it can help inside as well. If you’re looking for a particular product in a big box store, your phone can point you in the right direction.

Adding a social element to AR is another interesting development. For example, a start-up company in San Francisco called CrowdOptic is using AR to recognize which direction people in a crowd have their phones pointing. They can then invite others using that app to see what all those phones are seeing. For example, at a NASCAR race, fans who can’t see the entire track could point their phones at a distant turn and see what people see who are sitting much closer to the action.

When you think about how technology like this can be used, among other things, to create a more comprehensive, in-depth customer experience, it’s easy to see how the use of AR represents the next step in engagement between brands and consumers.

Of course, all this is just the beginning. Over the next few years, AR will change not only the way you use your phone, but also the way you see and interact with the world.

?2015 Burrus Research, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

DANIEL BURRUS is considered one of the world’s leading technology forecasters and innovation experts, and is the founder and CEO of Burrus Research, a research and consulting firm that monitors global advancements in technology driven trends to help clients understand how technological, social and business forces are converging to create enormous untapped opportunities. He is the author of six books including The New York Times best seller Flash Foresight.