The three key elements of AR toys: technology, scenes, content

Apple is likely to add AR camera functionality to the next generation of iPhones, and Apple CEO Cook has been very optimistic about AR augmented reality, and feels that AR is more valuable than VR. Therefore, the outbreak of AR in the next few years is a high probability event. This is a huge opportunity for the toy industry. I believe that many toy manufacturers have long been concerned about the combination of AR technology and toys. But as a new technology, crabs are not so delicious. In the early stage, there were some groping and some failures.

The three key elements of AR toys: technology, scenes, content

To develop AR toys, toy manufacturers must consider three factors: technology, scenes, and content.

In general, to develop a toy app (iOS + Android platform), you need at least 2 IT programmers and 1 artist, the time is 2 months. In this way, the cost of light labor is about 80,000 to 100,000. Generally, traditional toy manufacturers do not have programmers. If they recruit themselves, time and labor will have to rise. Obviously, for traditional manufacturers without IT programmers, independent development is very uneconomical. The best way is to work together or find an outsourcing company. However, there are too many pits outsourced, and everyone who has done it knows. Looking for a reliable AR technology company to jointly develop, joint sales, and deep cooperation, the risk is much smaller. If you want to use AR toys as your main business, you can't use the cooperation model. You must recruit and train your own IT staff and operations personnel to ensure development quality, user experience and timely maintenance.

In terms of the AR development platform, the current mainstream is Apple's Metaio and PTC's Vuforia. Vuforia currently has 175,000 registered developers and supports more than 20,000 apps; Metaio has 140,000 developers, which are comparable. In addition, there is open source ARToolKit, Wikitude, catchoom for a fee. Domestically, there are bright wind platform HiAR and Vision Chen EasyAR. Compared with foreign SDKs, the domestic AR development platform is easier to use, the technical support response is fast, and the server latency is small. In the specific image recognition and tracking, 3D animation model rendering, video overlay, special effects, no foreign platform is entered. It is recommended to use two domestic AR development platforms.

Another point to consider is based on the development of AR glasses, or based on mobile phone tablet mobile development. AR glasses are currently too expensive and the effect has not reached a very practical level. The AR program on the mobile side does not require any additional hardware costs for the consumer to develop, and is currently easy to develop. However, when looking at a lot of AR content, it is necessary to constantly scan with the camera, the experience is not as good as AR glasses.

Regardless of the use of the scene, it will be one of the main reasons for the failure of many AR toys. People, time, place, problem, purpose, these elements make up the scene. When designing AR toy products, you must first consider the children's usage scenarios. The foreign AR plush toy Gomo is a very good example. Children will have fear and anxiety when they are in the hospital. Before the examination, the medical staff scans the Gomo doll to show the human skeleton and tells the child about the organ movement and body composition. It is both educational and safe. When a child patient needs to go into a CAT scanner or a magnetic resonance machine alone, they can hold a Gomo doll to relieve fear and anxiety.

There are three aspects to using a scenario: objects (users), actions (requirements), and scenarios (time and space). Take Mo's early education toy "Devil's Painting" as an example. One of the usage scenarios is: parents and children (2-6 years old), learning English, after dinner. In other words, the scene is about "who is going to solve what under what circumstances". In this scenario, the demand is that children learn English, and there are many ways to solve the needs: attending training classes, asking English tutors, and self-study using the Mo Aike AR English textbook. There are many factors that determine which way users choose to address demand: effectiveness, cost, security, parent-child interaction, and more. We set the limit of use time in the product to effectively protect the child's eyes, that is, consider the parents' consideration of the child's safety; the camera sharing function in the app is because the parents have to interact with the child after going home from work. .

The above scenario is a macro scene, in addition to we also consider the micro scene, that is, the user's specific use details. For example, in what kind of posture does the child take the AR Children's Book of "Magic Painter"? How much strength? How to turn the book? When designing "Devil's Paintings", we did not consider that children and adults have completely different attitudes toward books. Children do not have the concept of "reading books". They only have the idea of ​​"playing books". Habitually, one of them will be in the book. The page tears down to play. Therefore, in the follow-up AR reading "Dora Love Adventure", the book is designed to be torn off, to facilitate the child to tear, and then go to school to go to school. After all, for children aged 2-6, play is learning.

Considering the essence of the scene is to design a product that can truly meet the user's needs from the user's point of view, instead of building a car, rather than a toy that the child wants.

The next step is the content. The content is king, this is true. In fact, the technical thresholds of many AR toys are not particularly high. Unlike AR glasses, there are only a few manufacturers. If you have the right IT technicians, you can break through the technical bottleneck in a few months, just to see who is in the details. A more refined experience can be done more smoothly. Therefore, the content that determines success or failure is the content. The content must have a strong sense of the picture, like animals, cartoon characters are very suitable. Remember, AR is the form, the content determines the form, don't be AR for AR. The content is suitable for AR, only to develop AR toys; if the content is not suitable, do not add a snake. Don't blindly add AR elements to your products because AR is fashionable. Why do we want to do AR children's English textbooks? Because this kind of content is suitable for presentation in AR form, it can be well integrated with sound, video, animation, text, pictures, etc., multi-sensory to stimulate children, stereoscopically image English words, so children can easily remember words It will also be of interest to English learning. interest is the best teacher. After having an interest, the children themselves have to learn, not the parents forced to learn.

Technology, scenes, and content are interlocking and indispensable. To make a quality AR toy, you must think through these three elements.

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