Enhancing customer experience with augmented reality

Augmented reality is a view of reality modified by computer-generated input such as sound, video, graphics or even GPS data. The augmented reality enhances ones perception of reality.

Augmented reality is often used to enhance a customer experience in a store as is evident in the appended video. Using AR technology the customer in the video is able to see how she looks in many different outfits without having to go to the change room every time she changes. This is a huge improvement over the old-fashioned mirror.

The use of augmented reality (AR) is expected to increase dramatically over the next few years. By 2024 AR products are expected to have a market value of $165 billion up 80 percent from what it is now. Many companies are jumping on the bandwagon wanting to use AR to give their customers a better experience and sell more products.

While stores are using AR, the technology can be used as part of on-line selling such as aircraft tickets. As it is now when you choose a seat you see a diagram with seats labeled. However there is no reason why AR cannot be used to let you see what the seat actually looks like so that you can see the leg room and other important facts about the seat and its location.

Another in store example of the use of AR is the AR menu generated through an app called KabaQ. You not only have the text of the menu with perhaps a few illustrations but you can see on your iPad or other device how the actual items would look on the table in front of you. The app displays the food in realistic 3D models and zoom can be adjusted and the food viewed from different angles. The appended YouTube video illustrates KabaQ.

Finally Sephora, a French chain of cosmetics, provides us with another AR application that allows a customer to try on makeup without actually doing so by showing what he or she would look like if it were applied. Sephora aunched what they call the Sephora Visual Artist. The app scans your face and then allows you to try on different lipsticks, eyeshadows, and even false eyelashes. It also offers tutorials showing you how to apply highlighter and create eyeliner looks. The tutorial shows what is being done on your face. A You Tube video illustrates some aspects of its use.

These are just a few of the examples of how AR is being used to enrich customers' experiences.

Swedish convenience store replaces cashiers by smartphones

IT specialist, Robert Ilijason, had a late-night journey of over 20 minutes to find a supermarket that was open after he had to find a store to buy baby food to feed his hungry toddler, after he broke his last jar of the food.

Ilijason lives in the small Swedish town of Viken.The experience gave him the idea of opening a 24-hour convenience store with no cashiers but only a smartphone:

Customers simply use their cellphones to unlock the door with a swipe of the finger and scan their purchases. All they need to do is to register for the service and download an app. They get charged for their purchases in a monthly invoice.

The shop only stocks basics such as milk, sugar, canned food, diapers and other products you would expect to find in a convenience store. Presumably, this includes baby food. However, alcohol cannot be sold in convenience stores in Sweden. It does not have tobacco or medical drugs either. Ilijason is surprised that no one appears to have thought of such an enterprise before. He hopes to start the same type of store in other small towns and villages in Sweden. He believes that small convenience stores can return to the countryside if they do not have the expense of hiring cashiers.

Ilijason has to receive deliveries and stock products on the shelves but that is all. The customers with their cellphones do the rest. The shop has several surveillance cameras to discourage theft in the 480 square foot store. If the front door stays open for longer than eight seconds or if someone tries to pry it open he receives a text message. Ilijason lives nearby. So far since opening in January he has had no attempted thefts.

Viken is a town of just over 4,000 people. One problem the store has is that older people do not understand the technology. Tuve Nilsson, 75, welcomed the new store, noting that there were many more shops in the town when he moved there back in 1976 and said it could be could be a convenience for elderly people living alone: "But if they can manage this (technology), I don't know. Sometimes I don't understand it."

Ilijason is considering other ways of opening the door such as a credit card reader that some banks use. Some supermarkets already have scanning machines that you can use instead of a cashier. Ilijason may hire someone to work in the store a few hours each day to help people who don't understand or are not comfortable with modern technology. Raymond Arvidsson, a friend of Ilijason loved the speed of shopping. He said he was able to do his shopping within a minute with no queues.

Robots are taking over many jobs, so it is hardly surprising that now smartphones are also joining the competition to displace humans. It all depends on the economics of the situation however. When Atlantic writer Adam Davidson visited Standard Motor Products' fuel-injector assembly line in South Carolina, he wondered why a worker, Maddie, was welding the caps onto the injectors. Maddie's supervisor, Tony, had a direct answer:"Maddie is cheaper than a machine." Maddie makes less in two years than a $100,000 machine would cost.

Sweden has quickly adapted to making mobile payments. WyWallet, one Swedish payment service, had 1.2 million users in 2014 and about 20 percent of the population that uses smartphones.

PC sales slump as tablets and smart phones gain market share

Two of the big names in personal computers Hewlett-Packard and Dell report disappointing sales as new products compete with laptops and desktops.

Not so long ago if you went on line it was through a laptop or desktop personal computer usually. Now people are going on line using smartphones, tablets, and other platforms.

HP(Hewlett-Packard) in the most recent quarter had its worst result since the company was created 73 year ago. Dell also suffered a bad quarter as personal computer sales declined.

No doubt the slowdown in the global economy accounts for some of the decline. Many people may be waiting for Windows 8 to be launched before they buy a new machine. But sales of personal computers have been declining for the past five years.

More and more people are using their smartphones and tablets for on line work. However as Wired points out the situation may not be so much of a slump in performance but a wholesale change in the market with desktops and laptops never regaining their dominance. Sales may never recover since people will be replacing their laptops and desktops by other devices.

Windows 8 may be a great operating system but it will probably only marginally improve sales results. Emerging markets too may help sales but this might very well be offset by even greater declines in sales in mature markets. A research firm IDC forecasts a meager growth rate of less than one per cent in the global PC market for 2012.

In my own case I fear that I will not be helping much to rescue PC manufacturers. My main computer is a 2005 Seanix that uses Windows XP and my backup is another refurbished Seanix of around the same vintage. The company went bankrupt about five years ago. My wife does have a Compaq laptop a few years old running Windows 7 but since we just replaced the hard drive we do not intend to replace the machine. The only bright spot is that a laptop that my step-daughter was using broke down and is not worth fixing. But then she may just use her smart phone or Blackberry tablet.

I will not be buying a smart phone either. My Motorola dumb cell phone has not been activated for several years and should be donated to a technology museum anyway according to my wife. I have always wanted to travel to Finland to compete in the cell phone throwing competition.

By 2016 sales of Tablets to be greater than notebook PCs.

 A survey by research firm NPD shows that devices such as the Apple iPad are attracting consumers away from notebook PCs. By 2017 the survey predicts that notebook PC shipments will increase from 208 million this year to 393 million in 2017. However tablet shipments in the same period go from 121 million this year to a whopping 416 million.
  The growth in the tablet market is most evident in what are called mature markets. These markets include North America, Japan, and Western Europe. These markets already account for two thirds of the market and will remain in the sixty per cent range up to 2017.
  An analyst at NPD said: “While the lines between tablet and notebook PCs are blurring, we expect mature markets to be the primary regions for tablet PC adoption. New entrants are tending to launch their initial products in mature markets. Services and infrastructure needed to create compelling new usage models are often better established in mature markets.”  A recent survey shows that Apple's iPad has almost 63 per cent of the market. Samsung in second place has just 7.5 per cent. Big names such as Google and Microsoft are also entering the tablet field.
  Personally I prefer to use an old desk top and to travel a lap top. For more see this article.