For the second part in this series I will be presenting in full the project proposal and design document for the Augmented Business Card. This is the document I used to present the project to my higher ups and what I will be referencing while moving forward to bring this idea to fruition.
xr business card
Identity
We will use the back facing image of our business cards as an image marker to place projections of our products into an augmented reality space.
Purpose
This application is intended as a proof of concept that the Unity AR Foundation packages are stable and useful, as well as an interesting gimmick and conversation starter with potential customers to make our cards more memorable.
technicalities
We will be using the back facing image of the current / upcoming redesign of the Inora business card as an image marker to place 3D projections of our products into augmented reality space. This will be done using the Unity AR Foundation package and is free to use. Moo (our current business card provider) offers business card with QR codes at no extra cost ($19.99 per 50 cards). This QR code can be scanned and the user will be navigated to a new page on the Inora site that will house links too the application from the Apple and Android app stores. From that point on the user needs only to open the application and point their camera at the back of our business cards to see a detailed 3D rendering of our products.
mechanics
Since this is a simple augmented reality application where most of the interaction comes from the way the user tries to view the projection, there is very little work that needs to be done to actually get the application built.
There will be two modes of interaction: Scanning and Placement.
Scanning interaction pipeline:
Scan the QR code on the business card.
Be redirected to Inora.com
Follow the respective download link for the user’s mobile operating system.
Launch the app and point their phone’s camera at the back of our business card.
Placement interaction pipeline:
Equal first three steps as the scanning pipeline
Point the phone’s camera at any flat surface with defining features and move the camera around while maintaining focus on a certain area
Once a plane has been detected it will change color and a UI placement marker will appear
The user is now free to tap the screen and our projected products will appear at the UI markers last position.
Example business card with a QR code
Product projection place on the current card design
Detecting a plane on the floor
Instantiating an object on the UI placement cursor
beyond
After the break down of the mechanics the formal document explains the estimated cost of the project (business card purchasing) as well as the remaining necessary work required to get the project to fruition; I will not bore you with that unnecessary information.
The next post in this series will be a break down of how to actually build this prototype using AR Foundation.