Published on <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/how-might-we-use-augmented-reality-part-1-45d7e9fed4e9?source=rss----eb297ea1161a---4">| Prototyping: From UX to Front End &mdash; Medium</a> Skjoldbroder 
The ongoing hype regarding AR (and VR) has sparked a recent, interesting conversation about the possibilities of augmented reality. <a href="https://medium.com/u/1608f116ad21">Luke Wroblewski</a> began it by posting examples of interesting use cases, such as “direct me to the nearest bathroom”, and “compare fuel prices”
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*tDCykTv5gymeVCp2oTKDLQ.png">one of Luke Wroblewski’s examples of how AR might be useful for humans
As more examples began pouring in, and Luke started <a href="https://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1974">collecting these on his site</a>, it struck me that categories were starting to emerge among the ideas were people coming up with. So logically, the next thing to do would be to make an affinity map, or a mind map. I’ve tried to do this, as a simple ideation exercise in how AR might augment reality (<a href="https://coggle.it/diagram/WYluIEX7ngABTOI1">mind map is here</a>)
<img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*9lA4sFrrBVezz4ebK7qKdw.png">via coggle (an online mindmapping service)
The categories I’ve used are:
<ul>
<li>Metadata — instructions for use, price, size, user reviews, historical information, product contents such as calories or phthalates</li>
<li>Translation — translating languages, units, currencies, and even audio might be use cases for AR.</li>
<li>Identification — what is that character’s name? Who is that person? What is that product or item called?</li>
<li>Pathfinding — AR could be used for locating stuff in the environment. Like a GPS, but instead of finding addresses, we might use AR to find bath rooms, elevators, information kiosks, bars, playgrounds, etc. This could be both inside buildings, and out in the open world.</li>
<li>Buying / selling of items — Image recognition algorithms can identify tons of objects, so why not use this to find out what those sneakers would cost on the second-hand market? Or how much they would bring you if you sold them?</li>
<li>Rich media augmentation — e.g. listen to the audio of a vinyl, or see the trailer for the movie on a poster. You might also listen to a cool car parked at the side of the road, of that Gibson Les Paul in the window?</li>
<li>Location aware information — We recently bought a house. It might have been nice to know stuff like average no. of sunny days, average rainfall, how noise the neighbourhood is, on average, etc.</li>
</ul>
Some of these categories may overlap (you might argue that location aware information is just another type of metadata, and indeed that information about buying or selling items is also metadata. In fact, everything listed here is metadata 🙂 You might also argue critically, that some of these things do not in fact need AR at all — and I would welcome such criticism, since I think we need a dialog about what the core value proposition of AR actually is.
<h3>Do you have any input about what AR might be useful for? Please leave a comment!</h3>
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<a href="https://blog.prototypr.io/how-might-we-use-augmented-reality-part-1-45d7e9fed4e9">How Might We use Augmented Reality (Part 1)</a> was originally published in <a href="https://blog.prototypr.io">prototypr</a> on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How Might We use Augmented Reality (Part 1)

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