Champion City Part 3: Augmented Reality
What Do Area Rugs Have to Do With New Rochelle’s Mayors’ Challenge Idea?
Buying an area rug online is scary, amirite? What if it’s too big? Too small? What if the pattern, which looked so nice on your computer screen as you placed it in your digital shopping basket, screams: “Welcome back to 1974!” when you receive and roll out the real thing? Sure, if you make a mistake, you can always ship it back. But have you ever tried to re-roll and package a heavy rug? Dear reader, it’s not pleasant.
I recently purchased TWO (!!) rugs online and it was a roaring success. I have terrible judgement when it comes to decorating, so what happened? Augmented reality happened. The online rug company I used had this nifty feature that allowed me to take a picture of my basement where the rug would go, and then “try on” different styles and sizes of rugs available for purchase. Thank goodness I used this tool because the first 20 rugs I thoughtwere a perfect fit looked bizarre when digitally overlaid next to my basement furnishings.
If augmented reality (“AR”) isn’t a term you’ve heard before, don’t worry. It’s a new concept for many. A popular example of AR you might recognize is Pokemon Go. When a player holds their phone up to catch a Pokemon, they see a cute digital creature overlaid upon the actual background scenery captured by their phone’s camera. AR in action.
So, back to the original question: What do area rugs have to do with New Rochelle’s Mayors’ Challenge idea? Obviously, retailers have started to figure out that AR can be a useful tool to help customers make better decisions. Our team has a hunch that AR (and other “immersive technologies” ) can also be a useful tool to help citizens and city planners make better decisions. Not sure if a new public sculpture will add or detract from a plaza’s ambiance? “Try it on” with augmented reality! Can’t decide between four different park bench styles? Crowd source a vote with citizens — let them swipe and view all options at their leisure before submitting a vote for their favorite!
Over the course of the summer, we’re inviting New Rochelle citizens to play around with AR, VR (that’s virtual reality), and some other immersive media tools while we observe their reactions. Our findings from these sessions will help us narrow down what kinds of immersive media tools city planners, and the citizens they serve, prefer and are most useful in helping us imagine a future New Rochelle.
