Augmented Reality: Not exciting to "normal" users...
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 12:40AM Chris Dannen, over at Fast Company just put out a post called Put Your Phone Down: Augmented Reality is Overblown where he dismisses augmented reality offhandedly and doesn’t appear to really understand what it is or could be. The opinion in his blog post is myopic at best and he makes a few subtle stabs, like the following:
…few of the “normal” smartphone users I talk to can get excited about augmented reality. Sure, they’re not thinking five years ahead, as we’re told tech visionaries do.”
Is he suggesting that those people getting excited about augmented reality aren’t normal, being nothing more than the techno-fringe? The next bit feels slightly sardonic as well…presenting tech visionaries as people who say they are thinking five years ahead, and being dubious about that.
In the next breath, he gets a little enthusiastic about AR being right around the corner and not five years in the future, and that it is in its “last trimester”, but then saying that few people seem to care. The recent issue of Esquire, featuring marker based AR, is highlighted as the example proving his point.
Then, shockingly, he quotes Jonathan Wegener, a developer of an AR app as saying that he thinks that consumers will get tired of AR and that it won’t catch on. Wegener’s app (NYC Exit Strategy Subway Map) sells for $4.99 in the Apple app store. Why bother if you don’t think consumers are interested in it?
Dannen ends his blog post by shifting positions again and saying that:
AR isn’t bound to fail—that’s not what I’m arguing. Iteration after iteration will be pushed on consumers until the technology finds its niche.
See what he did there? iterations pushed on consumers and niche. He seems almost annoyed and irritated that augmented reality apps are being shoved down his throat on a daily basis, each one slightly different than the one before it, and that maybe, after as much trial and error as Thomas Edison went through to perfect the light bulb, the industry will finally find a niche for the technology. Anyway, what exactly is he arguing? Nearly the entire post is a little sarcastic and almost mocking of both augmented reality, the people developing it, and the consumers that are interested in it.
The last line:
But if you’re expecting apps like Layar to drastically change the way you live your everyday life, well, that’s just not reality.
I’m not aware of anyone out there suggesting that apps like Layar, Wikitude, Robotvision, Yelp, Bionic Eye, Accelair, etc. are going to change the way everyday life is being led. I am aware of some people challenging whether or not these apps should even qualify as augmented reality, and a vast number of people realizing that these apps are barely the equivalent of outputting “hello world” in BASIC. So much more is to come, and is already in development. We haven’t even scratched the surface.
But Chris ignores almost everything else in the emerging industry and the phenemonal technologies beginning to creep out of the Universities, and focuses on very basic implementations of AR. His opinion is validated by his “industrial designer” friend who didn’t think the Esquire magazine implementation was all that. What kind of industrial designer is his friend? If the guy designs next-generation toilet seats and urinals, I doubt he can make any kind of authoritative judgment on user interface, multimedia, or a unique technology like augmented reality. The point isn’t that you need a PC and a webcam to experience the AR in Esquire, the point is that you can experience the magazine in an entirely different way.
I’ve spoken before about the dangers of industry hype, setting the right expectations, avoiding the wrong judgment of the technology before it matures, and of course, the need to strive for innovation. Chris’ post is short sighted, does not add anything of value to the discussion of augmented reality (negative or positive), and is unfairly dismissive in a condescending manner.
It is opinions like this one in forums like Fast Company that are making it harder for the guys on the ground to gain traction with their efforts and is demoralizing. Is it any wonder that the spirit of innovation and entrepreneuring in North America has been beaten down?
Take a look at “augmented reality” in google trends and judge for yourself.
Is augmented reality just a fad? Are only the out of touch tech-elite and basement nerds excited about it? Is it true that “normal” and intelligent people are merely tolerating augmented reality, giving each other knowing nods like wise adults humoring elementary students excited about Santa Claus?
I think not. If Chris had done his homework and spent any real time researching instead of making an off-the-cuff blog post characterizing an entire industry and technology on the opinions of a few friends, he might have come to a different conclusion.
A few more things for you to consider:
This particular blog post by Chris reminds me of some other famous quotes:
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
“I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processings is a fad that won’t last out the year.”
- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice-Hall, 1957
“But what…is it good for?”
- Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip
“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”
-Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of DEC
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Reader Comments (3)
Hi Robert,
I could not have agreed more. AR is not going to be VR. As an academician I had been teaching VR for last four years and I always had difficulties to find out how it could be used by mass. But with AR that is exactly the opposite. And I actually believe that it wont be so much longer before we start to see the breakthroughs. It might have taken hardwares 20 years before coming up with new one and softwares 10 years, but this age so many people are trying and they keep sharing what they are doing. I had been helping at least 20 phD students in Malaysia on using AR on education. About 4 engineering students just enrolled for their masters in robotics and their target is to show whatever the robot does in realtime in another place through AR. My undergrad students were the people who did the facebook AR apps which I blogged about.
And all of this is happening in Malaysia. I am aware of quite a few works in Singapore, India and China. And For Japan and Korea, they had been doing this at least 10years. It is ok if we dont see much success right now. We will just keep trying.
So AR is not just here to stay, it is going to redefine what we do and it surely going to do that a lot faster than we can think of. Quite soon we will be thinking, how could we have lived without it (just the way we cant live without Google now).
Anecdotes from the real world...
I was using Yelp Monocle on a San Francisco bus and the gal next to me could barely contain her curiosity. Yes I did look strange holding up my phone and panning but she didn't shy away from my strange behavior, she wanted to see the phone screen. People feel good about phone apps.
At Halloween I showed some non-geek friends the http://meijerhalloween.com/ site and we had a blast with the interaction and effects.
So yes, "normal people" find AR quite accessible and interesting. It's a natural progression and it's just begun. I also think the term "augmented reality" is a bit too esoteric to catch on, some other words will start to be used as the content providers get more involved.
The only context in which "Augmented Reality" could become a passing fad is in the gimmicky, all-FX and no substance, only for the wow-factor use it has seen in the past year in advertising. On the one hand, it has popularized the technology such that the unwashed-masses have a chance they may be familiar with it, but it is used in such a superficial way that, to someone with a shortsighted mind, it could easily come across as frivolous.
However, marketing/advertising is a very navel-gazing industry. When advertisers have the impression that a trend is becoming old-hat, it has usually only just barely begun to come onto the radar of the average joe on the street.
So while I find a lot of the pure novelty-value advertising executions to be wearing a bit old myself, I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm very close to it. Invariably it is the industry outsiders who are most often still quite impressed... dare I say, "Blown Away!" When I bring up AR to friends and relative outside of technology and marketing fields, almost none of them have ever even read, much less seen any of this. For John Q. Public, AR is just now coming onto the radar. And I have yet to meet anyone who, when exposed to AR for the 1st time, even in the form of the most trivial advertising implementation, isn't completely jaw-dropped.
While claiming to speak for the general public, Chris Dannen appears to suffer from being a New York City elite, living in a bubble, only exposed to jaded inside-the-industry marketing and advertising executives, and takes the anecdotal observation of this miniscule sample from his own tiny private circle, extrapolates it out and fancies it to somehow be a representation of the "normal" public.