Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Voice assistants as every day augmented reality

Recently I'm heavily testing and using different types of voice assistants like Google now, Cortana, Siri, S-voice. Everything I can, I try to test. During this time I can see how good example of daily augmented reality they are. But hey, this is nothing new. When I think about this technology and future of it I'm getting happy like a child, thanks to this voice assistants.

Time when device understands you. Are we there yet ?

I think we're pretty close but not yet on the finish line. Sure, we can give some less and more complex commands to our device, and we can get a good result but still this is not something what I would call "understanding". Currently our voice assistants allow us to interact with the device in much more comfortable way. Especially when you`re in the car or even while walking. At the moment most of reminders, meetings, messages etc. I'm doing using this kind of software and it works fine. I must say I'm missing a good glass in front of my eye to see more information. I would prefer to read SMS myself than to hear it…maybe it will change. I would like to see some basic information, navigation etc. This is what I want. Google glass was to much disturbing in my opinion, it was cause mostly by it construction. I hope that next generation will be better.

Time when device understands you. Are we there yet ?

This is hard question to answer. Is it safer ? Not everybody will agree with that, there are even voices that glasses with augmented reality are much more dangerous during driving car than mobile phone. Is this true ? I'm not sure, I think it is much more about the user. Should some functionalities be blocked during driving ? This may be a good idea.
So safety is not a good argument. Is it convenience ? It looks like this but currently if you have different accent than native than you can have a lot of problems using it. For example Cortana has a lot of problems with understanding me when I tell her to ignore something. Strange, so simple word, so many problems. Often you can have a lot of problems with voice control and you need to use the device in old school way. Probably it will change in future. So this is not the best argument.
It is cool. Oh yes, always :) Funny thing that IT is one of not many branches were argument like "this will be awesome even if it won't be useful" is more than enough to make a good project.

Voice assistant is cool but not so useful

I think currently voice assistants are more cool than useful. It look good on paper, it looks good on presentation, their are good marketing material and good start for future but currently - unfortunately - their not so useful. We have still some technological problems that are stoping this projects a bit. I hope that it will go further and further. I like very much vision from movie "Her" (I've already mentioned about it in one of previous posts), where people can fully interact with their computers simply by voice. Not only simple commands, but full interaction. I think that we're going this way and sooner or later we'll get there. Is it good ? Time will show

Augmented reality in business

Business, nothing new. We are all connected with this word in some way. What can change in future ? What we can get from implementing augmented reality in business ? Is this only a new fancy "gadget" or maybe it will give something valuable that allow to improve sale and/or product itself ?

Augmented reality = new possibilities

Augmented reality can offer a lot more than only couple of cool visual effect on screen of your smartphone. Why I'm talking about smartphone ? Because - at least for now - augmented reality possibilities will be limited to mobile devices in business (don't worry there will be a exception). Glass type project are still in minority, they need still a lot of work before we see them in on our faces. But that isn't a problem. You can already see people in stores taking pictures of floor panels to rethink everything in home. But what to do to make it better ?

So what new possibilities we can get from augmented reality ? Lets talk about couple of them.

Furniture shops

Did you ever tried to furnish a room ? Do you know how many questions you need to answer if you want to do it properly ? Do you know how many doubts you have when you want to pick something ? How it will look like when I put it near this closet ?

Project like this are the answer:

This is a great usage of augmented reality with mapping over a known picture. You can simply put magazine when you want to put new furniture and check how it will look like. Very handy and useful.

Important thing is that you need an object to map the virtual element. It allows you to move around it and check from different sides. It allows to scale to product so you can really act like you have a new sofa in the room. Putting only images on the screen is a really bad idea and gives to user a poor effect. Example below (don't do it like this ! ):

Augmented reality + factories = improvements

Ok, now lets go to different part of augmented reality. Goggles. What are the problems related with jobs related with manual work in - for example - factory that produces cars ? Two most common are:

1. Human errors during assemble

2. Cost related with learning new worker

Both of them can be fixed or at least reduced using augmented reality. Imagine a worker with special goggles that analyze parts in front of the worker and shows what should go where and how it should be connected/assembled. It will strongly reduce count of errors made by human. It will help to increase quality of the product with out increasing the cost of the work. This is the path which business should follow.

Now the second case. If the new worker will also have same glasses, it will allow to reduce time needed from a senior worker. It will increase his time in the job that he should do. And again, with out increasing the costs we increase performance.

There is a lot of augmented reality project related with business and big data. One of my favorite is Daqri. Helmet that their building is a fantastic usage of augmented reality, it has endless potential and possibilities.

Not only Daqri, we also have interesting project from VW:

Marketing

Ok now something easy. How to interest a potential client with our product ? We need to do something cool ! Something that will make him to pay attention on the product. Augmented reality is a fantastic tool for that. Look at this Coca-Cola campaign:

So easy, and so great effect. Augmented reality is a powerful tool that refers to a very important feeling...fun. Lets be honest, we all want to have fun, we all want to spend a good time. If you give a tool that will give fun to client and allow you to focus him on the product, than you`re a winner. If you want to do that think about augmented reality.

This even don't have to be a strict commercial related with your product, if you can softly mark your brand there, than it is very often more than enough. Look on the possibilities of augmented reality in marketing. I shown only two examples but marketing business has done homework. Usage of this technology is more and more often. And why it is so big success ? Because for common people this is still technology about witch they don't know a lot

Technology in school is great, but is there a limit ?

Augmented reality and technology in school

According to OECD and theirs latest report there is a limit. Everybody will agree that new technologies are very helpful in education but according to mentioned report, if there is too much of computers and technologies, results of students are getting lower.

New technologies are important

Recently I wrote about role and possibilities related with new technologies - like augmented reality (Technology in education is the future) - in education. As for, education system is one of parts of our lives where we need to think and talk about computers, gadgets, new ideas. Lets be honest, education of young minds is very important for all of us, our future often depends on them.

But we can't substitute all of "old school" elements like books, paper, hand writing with new technologies. I love augmented reality, it gives a lot of new possibilities, but we can't limit kids only to virtual presentations like we can't limit them only to books and lecture. We need to find a point in perfect position between this two, very different options.

System need to evolve

Education system need to evolve like we all do, it need to adapt to current possibilities, current needs and trends. But it also need to remember about basic - not so simple - skills like hand writing or books. Nowadays I often see that young people have no idea what standard, paper encyclopedia is and how to use it. As for me, this is disaster.

New technology is not a threat, it should not be banned from schools, but as the report shown, it should be used with care. The only possible solution is to rethink everything and try to find out how to connect the old part, with the new part.

Sport...probably only place where I don't want see augmented reality

I love augmented reality, I think it is part of our future. Future that is in progress. It will be a thing that will be part of our every day life. But there is a place, part of our society, where I don`t want to see augmented reality. I mean sport.

Battle of skill

Why sport ? In this terms I'm an idealist. I want to think, I want to believe, I believe that sport is battle of skills, battle of characters, battle people. I don't care is it football, soccer, volleyball, tennis, running, F1 races.

I don't see there any place for any technological gadgets. For example, there was an attempt in swimming. Swimmers were equipped in special swimming costume similar to shark skins. There was great increase in their results, but after quite short time, this costumes were banned. Why ? Because results where built not by swimmers but by costumes.

People want to see true and epic battles. They want to know - or even they want to be sure - that not everyone can do this on same level. They want to have their idols.

Augmented reality - The Destroyer

Augmented reality - in my opinion - will destroy the most beautiful part of the sport. It will change everything, it can allow less skilled to be one of the best, it will reduce the importance of true talent and true, hard and long training. Even now, there is a very strong opposition to implement more technological gadgets in sport.

Think about F1 racers or skiers. What if they will able to see the best route on their goggles ? What if they will receive informations that are counted on computer ? They will not need to know, to learn that, to even ignore that.

Simpler is better

Augmented reality is a beautiful and great technology. I'm sure that it will help us. I'm sure that it will make our life easier, better and more productive. But everything has its place, and place of augmented reality is outside of the sport.

Google, project Aura

Google glass is an awesome project but it has a lot of downsides. There was quite about them but at least there is something new and interesting. I'm talking about "Project Aura". Google is looking programmers and engineers, some of them are already on board and they came from Amazon (Lab126 studio).

What is the plan ?

It looks that Google Glass will be only one of many gadgets related to wearable technology that will be developed in Project Aura. That is great news. If they extend them and make better from previous version of Google glass, and build around it some compatible side projects, augmented reality can get a big boost in every day life. It can be quite big revolution. Looking forward for any news in this topic.

Project Aura...Project Ara.

Do you remember Project Ara ? Project in witch team (mostly built by people from Motorola) is working on modular mobile phone. I'm wondering is this some funny name similarity or maybe this is a part of a bigger plan. Who knows ?

Finger crossed

Project Aura is great thing fro augmented and virtual reality segment. It can give a big boost for the technology and business itself. Currently Microsoft is standing on dominant position. I think it`s to early for this. Augmented reality still need many strong impulse to evolve and to reach level where it will be useable in every day tasks. So everyone keep your finger crossed

Augmented reality, virtual reality...are we ready for it ?

Are we ready for augmented reality and virtual reality ?

We`re constantly talking about new technologies, smartphones, augmented reality, virtual reality, smartwatches, wearable technologies, IoT and what ever you can think about. But are we ready for all of this as a society ? For us - people related with IT - the answer is very simple: "Yes", but what with people from little towns, what with people that are technologically excluded ?

I live in capital, things like bus ticket machine aren't anything strange for me, I don't have a problem with buying a ticket in a bus using pay wave technology, getting my money from cash machine, paying over the internet. It is as simple as breathing. But recently I spoke a lot with my mechanic (yes yes it's true, I can`t fix everything by myself !) that lives about 30km outside the town. He didn't use public transport for about 10 years so when he recently had to buy a ticket in a simple - for me - machine he was stunned, he didn't know what to do.

Simple ? Maybe not so simple

During my studies I had a lot of subjects related to user interfaces, user experience, designing. Funny thing that in most cases we talked about ticket machines. Something that is common and - at first glance - very easy to do with out any problems, but when you think about it there is a lot of traps. You need to think about lot of variables and one of them is the user himself. Most of the machines should be - but often their not - as simple as possible. You should look at it and you should know what to do. For people constantly connected to technology is hard to think like a person who didn't ever see something like that. It creates problems in their every day routine. Of course we`re not living in a cities full of robots so you can say that they don't need to use it, but to be honest, I think we want to live in city like this. Maybe we will faster than we think, so this problem is really on time.

Progress, progress everywhere...

As a society we're doing progress every day also in technology. We're constantly changing but we're not doing this evenly. And this can become a problem. Technology enters in more every day tasks, you can find it in health service, in post offices, city departments. Technology evolves faster than most of people can adapt. This is a fact that and we can't change it.

So are we ready as a society for even bigger jump like augmented reality in every day life? I think no, at least not yet.

Did you watch "Her"? It is a good example of society that created a strong bound with a augmented reality. It shows a perfect - from technological point of view - city, where everyone is connected. It's impossible. This perfect vision will never have place. We want to see it like this, but if we will have a choice - as a single unit - there will always be someone that will not go with main stream or won't be able and I think that is good.

Solution anywhere ?

I don't think so. Probably we have couple of possible routes but there is no option do decide which one is better. We can force the less educated by putting more and more machines everywhere where it is possible and force them to learn. They will learn or they will have problems.

We can wait and do it slowly. Society may adapt or may not.

We can wait for new generation that will grow up surrounded with machines even more than now. It will be easier for them.

Non of this will solve the main cause, there will be always some opportunists, people that just won't want to change, to adapt. There always be someone that just don't like technology or because of some reason will be excluded.

The only thing we can do is to make it as simple as possible and try to reach as many people as possible.

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Augmented reality blog - we work more and more

If you think about past, how do you see every day in work in your imagination ? Probably in the same way as most of the people. Work starts at 8:00, ends at 17:00. Good bye. That is all for today. It was hard to be reached with out tablet, laptop and mobile phone in your bag/pocket.

Than it started: pagers, mobile phones, laptop, mobile internet, smartphones etc. Everything to make our live easier, everything to have more free time for ourselves.

What changed ?

What was the result ? People have changed, thinking about job and responsibilities changed. Result is that we have less time and we work more and more. Every mentioned device is like a leach that ties as to our desk in our office. It is hard to say "sorry I don't have tool to do it". Why ? Because now you can have your office everywhere with you.

As I've mentioned before, everything was done for us, to make our live easier so we can have more time. For example, you don't write a letter, than go to post office and send it, now you send an email. Much faster isn't it ? Ok but now you write 30 ? 40 ? 50 ? more ? email per day, you receive probably as much or even more. That consume more time than you think. In result you have less time than before.

Work around the clock

Now people often work 24/7. Some of them must - lets be serious, their are jobs that requires that. Some of them "must" because their working in a toxic company or they have robot as boss. Very big part of them work around the clock because they're never leave the office. I think this is my category. Every little leach is holding me there. Email, SMS, facebook reminder, calendar...there is always something related to work in range of my hand. Funny thing that we're still looking for new leash. Smartwatch ? Why not, everybody will like to have a next reminder about email from client !

It's harder to rest nowadays

Now it's much harder to rest. Recently I've took some time off. It took my a lot of effort to turn off everything related with my job only for few days. There is always something related to it and I know that this is not only my problem. This is just a very hard thing, especially in a dynamic business like for example IT. I think that best way to rest is just hide in some kind of cave on a desert island in center of ocean :) Nobody will find you there ! But think what will you do with your free time. If you're constantly working on 110% and suddenly you stop, what will you do ? The biggest problem if this situation is that you often want to do soooooo much that you're ending absolutly nothing. Sad, sad, sad....and I know what I'm talking about, I've been there.

How to change it ?

I don't think we can change it. This is what we've become, this is how we evolved. I don't see any chance to make a turn around from that. We will do what we're good in...we'll adapt. There will be new kind of jobs, probably more elastic, but I think that 24/7 syndrom will increase by absorbing more and new areas of our lives.

Augmented reality isn't new technology. It is with us from a long time now and still we're not even close to use full potential of it. On one side this is great, because it still fascinates a lot of people, it allows us to search for new possibilities. On the other hand....we want more ! and we want it now !

In this article I want to describe 3 main paths of augmented reality, paths that will close this technology to common people in their daily behavior. The best thing is that this paths are already known, but as for me, not used in 100% yet.

1. Moving in city

What can be more common than moving in city? In the city that you're living, or in the city in witch you're on a business trip or on holidays. There is always something to search, something to find.

Now imagine that in front f your eye you see something similar to the picture above. It is much easier to find the thing that your looking for. Isn't it ? It is much easier to navigate. You don't even need your glasses, smartphone with function like this is more than enough.

This also opens new way to advertise your business. Virtual signs, virtual signboards, visible from couple of kilometers. Visible when needed. Interactive advert that allow to promote best things for people that are near is a bigger chance for getting them. If you combine that with collecting interesting data you can set advert according to person interests. Everything described above will help to navigate and move in the city, and cities nowadays are getting bigger and bigger. Amount of services, shops, interesting places, interesting things is getting harder to embrace by regular person.

This kind of application should also support help related to public transport. In days when traffic jam is a regular day in city, public transport is getting more and more important. There is a lot of applications that help you plan your trip by displaying info about which bus and when you should use, where and when you should change it etc. But all this are only static information. It should adapt, it should inform you when there is possibility to change the route on better or faster one. You don't need to do it, but you can, and that is why you should be inform. Marking stops, showing time of arrival, all this is a must have in future city, all this will make life a bit easier.

2. Interactive magazine

Who read Harry Potter? Who watched the movie about the little wizard? Do you remember how newspapers looked? They were animated by magik, pictures there were like live scene. Awsome thing is that you don't need magic for that.

Look at this:

or this

Why adverts can't look like this in a regular newspaper or magazine ? Why we're not using so commonly already? Isn't this much better? Everybody complains that they hate ads, but to be honest, everybody is looking on them and even are checking the content. For this people this should be made, if you want to sell a good product and you want to promote it in a good way, do it in a right way! This is much more interesting, it allow to deliver much more information to potential customer, and ads are all about that.

Ok lets talk less about money. Everybody is talking that traditional newspapers are dying. Everybody is looking for information in the internet, they can read there, they can see more pictures, they can watch movie with more information. Augmented reality allows to put all of this in a simple, daily newspaper. The most interesting facts can be upgraded by adding movies, or virtual gallery for it on the screen of your smartphone. Think about that!

3. Museums and not only

Did you every think how some streets looked 10, 20, 50 years ago ? Standard museum is to boring for you ? Augmented reality already have solutions for that and I really hope it will evolve more and more in this direction.

There is a lot of projects sponsored by museums that allow you to look and today places in different way and it is a great news. People nowadays often forget about the past, about lessons provided by history. Technology is moving forward very fast but that does not allow us to forget about the things that passed, about places, people, moments, events. We can learn a lot from our history. We need to remember. Augmented reality open new doors for that. It helps to interest kids with things that couple years ago were to boring for them. Look at examples below:

Isn't it awesome ? Look at people faces. Everybody are thrilled, everybody is interested. Passing knowledge, learning don't need to be boring, it by fascinating, interesting, it really can be cool. Augmented reality should be developed in this branch, we need to find more and more usages of it in name of history, knowledge and education

Augmented reality is new Virtual reality ? I don't think so

I've came along with this article: "Augmented Reality is the new Virtual Reality"

Spend couple of minutes and read it cause it is quite interesting and than think about it. Do you agree with this statement ? This question is very tricky. You need to think about it.
If you think only in terms of trends, fashion, current "hype", then yes, augmented reality is the new virtual reality. Augmented reality is currently making everybody say "woooow it`s sooo coooool". It look great, you can feel like hero of sci-fi movie from top shelf. Everybody is talking about it. Large companies invest a lot of money in it, Microsoft with Hololens, Apple with Metaio, Daqri with their helmet, and so on. It looks futuristic, it looks nice, it is promoted as good fun, as a must have of every modern person. If you think only this way you must agree with:

Virtual Reality is cool, don't get me wrong - but VR has been around for ages, and just like your parents and the acronym "lol", it's just not cool anymore. It had its time.

Ok so why did I wrote that I don't agree ? You need to think more about technology itself. About the usage, about the possibilities related to it, about the purpose of it. Than something is missing, something does not fit into the puzzle. Why ? Because AR and VR are totally different. I've described technical differences here so there is no point to write it again.

Lets focus on different aspect. Differences will never allow to substitute one technology by another. Virtual reality will never push augmented reality from the market, and same story in the other way. For example:
You will never make - using augmented reality - as good training software as the one made in virtual reality. And in the other way, you will never make software that will help worker to assemble a car using virtual reality, and using augmented reality you will. This is only one trivial example, but with out any effort you will easily think about many different ones.

As you can see there is always other side of the coin. This topic probably will be touched many times in future. And it is good news, both technologies are fascinating, both can help a lot of people, but we also need to remember that both of them have also a dark side. Virtual reality can build so beautiful worlds that people can be lost in them, they can lose control and forget that VR isn't real. Augmented reality - mostly project related with glasses/goggles - are bringing more and more legal and ethical problems. That is why we need to remember that there is something more than technology in the background