In times like these you need to innovate
In 79 AD Mount Vesuvius broke out. From Pliny the Younger’s letters we learn of the devastation the eruption caused. Pliny desperately sought to communicate with his uncle, Pliny the Elder, in Pompeii, who intended to go to Stabiae to rescue his friend. Pompeii, because of its vicinity to the volcano, was of course severely affected by the explosion. Indeed, the town was completely buried by masses of lava and was only to be rediscovered centuries later. Meanwhile Pliny the Younger sends letters by boat from Miseno, across the bay of Naples, to Pompeii eagerly awaiting news from his uncle. The menacing cloud of hot ash must have been a foreboding sight for the citizens of Naples’ bay.
Almost two thousand years later and Naples is undergoing another catastrophe. This time the threat is not visible though, it is invisible. It is a virus. It is COVID 19. The whole city has closed down and the citizens of Naples have not been allowed to leave their homes. They call it quarantine. We are quarantined. We have been quarantined for more than four weeks now. The Apple Academy has also closed down. Rumour has it, it will stay closed for time to come. Lessons are delivered online using a third-party app. The quality of the lessons depends largely on the quality of the Internet connection. And those, who used to be friends convening every day at the academy, are slowly growing apart by bandwidth overload. Sorry …. What did you say? I cannot hear you. The unique atmosphere of the school is difficult to translate through third-party apps. Our mojos are stuck somewhere between the router and the server.
Something has to change. So we trail-blazed through the myriad of information, digging deep into the mechanisms of IOS development. With the weight of solitude on our shoulders, we worked through tomes of developer information and human interface guidelines to come up with a solution to be closer to each other again. A digital classroom for the Apple Academy so that the developers could feel the love again — the virus of the Academy. Then we stumbled upon the possibilities of ARKit. Augmented reality to place digital content into the real world? We were hooked. So we set out to explore the different tools of ARKit ,from SceneKit to RealityKit, to explore the boundaries of the possible. With AR + Play being the future strategy of Apple the time has come to sit down and get serious. These frameworks will start a new form of interaction hitherto unimaginable. We are the cusp of a new dawn.
So we came up with this idea, where our souls could meet again. When we dream, we dream big. A video-conferencing app based on Apple’s AR technologies. Lessons would be delivered via this channel for an immersive collaboration in a different dimension. A sort of a digital classroom, where content is shared in a different reality. The app is intended to create a virtual space, where peers can be together again, read their emotions and, above all, feel the love of the Academy. No matter what the distance, be we separated by geographical or by emotional distance, connections will be possible to get together again. What cloud are you on? I hear you. I can hear your reservations about network latency, online sickness and data flows. But with the roll-out of 5G being imminent and the development of AR clouds only a question of time, what is required are business models, that actually work for the business. For you can have a vision alright, but it needs to work. So with our customer segment clearly mapped out, namely our developer troops at the academy, and our resources and capabilities identified, we started to write a business model. Because AR is still in its infancy, and reduced to filters on Instagram, there is no app yet that has a clear AR-based business plan. With innovation, however, comes change. Business models need to get ready and innovate.
What would Pliny the Younger have said to his uncle in this day and age? Pacing up and down the harbour walls, waiting eagerly for the return of the post boat, desperate for a sign of life from his beloved uncle. He must have felt profound solitude, whilst the ash cloud was towering over him. Today we build far bigger electronic clouds of data. Yet disruptions to our system cannot prevent a break-down in communication. AR would be a game changer. Pliny the Younger could have been on the same boat to tell his uncle to come to Miseno rather than Stabiae, where the ash cloud was blowing to and where the uncle ultimately died of asphyxiation. One thing is for certain, the volcano will go up again. When it does, let’s make sure we have a connection.
Read the articles on business models for AR here.
