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Nowadays, brands are becoming more tech-savvy, that implies that even more of them will go mobile. Whatever business you are running, an app is not optional for a brand promotion. Let’s see how Gratwick managed to meet customer service goals, be innovative and discover new kinds of interactions with clients and employees using augmented reality application.

How does Gatwick Airport app works?

In 2017, Gatwick Airport Official was launched and since that time the app was installed more than 50,000 times on Google Play. That’s impressive.

At first sight, the solution works like many other virtual guides. It provides users with live updates about gate number and flight status, allows travelers planning their time by check-in queue times, booking the closest parking, and pre-ordering a takeaway meal.

But, there is something that makes Gatwick Airport app stand out. It’s ‘find your way’ option. Powered by augmented reality, the app shows a way to a needed gate, baggage carousels, check-in desks, specific food or shopping outlets. Basically, the technology provides an augmented reality indoor navigation system (much like Google Maps, but indoor) to help passengers find directions to wherever they need. Passengers can find a way just by capturing an area they are in. Then, they’ll see navigation signs popping up on the screen. As they walk around in the real world, AR integrates digital information with the user’s environment in real time and the arrows move along the map.

How Has Gatwick Reached Their Audience And What Does It Teach Us?

Let’s analyze what Gatwick’s passengers get when they use the app and how similar techniques can help you boost your business, enhance its value and grow your audience.

There are 3 key points that can help with brand promotion:

• Customer satisfaction;
• Emotional connection;
• Helping not selling.

Customer Satisfaction

So, customer satisfaction. We live in the era where technology occupies every corner of our life, and people love having everything on their phones. If you give them an app that simplifies their routine they will be yours forever. And Gatwick did so.

By integrating AR wayfinding into the mobile application, international airport has facilitated passenger experience and obtained more consumer satisfaction. You can do the same. Design a solution for your brand that will make the whole navigation experience easier for your customers. If you own a rental business, you may opt for an AR app that acts as an information hub and makes it easy to find household appliances and add interactive, visual instructions where needed.

Customer satisfaction, in particular, is linked to experience. So, create it. The more enjoyable it will be the more people like your brand. Augmented reality surely surpasses other technology innovations in maintaining excellent navigation user experiences. Think about integrating it into your business.

Emotional Connection

What about the emotional connection? Gatwick used AR to connect with their customers on a deeper level, enhance engagement and develop more sustainable relationships for the long term. How? Augmented reality took away all insecurities of being late, missing the plane or getting confused with the door by providing digital data to the camera feed of user’s smartphone and visualizing needed ways and options. Indeed, even B2B brands get more sales when they use emotional messages. Think about the ways you can use augmented reality to strengthen emotional connection with your audience.

Helping Not Selling

And the best thing is that Gatwick AR app is practical. By implementing wayfinding technology into the app, Gatwick prevented chaos and confusion at the airport. Moreover, it reduced stress and anxiety, taking away the need to constantly check for information on the internet or ask the staff. Prioritizing quality service through helpful apps you build a memory which further strengthens the brand image.

What Brands May Need Wayfinding

AR and wayfinding have a wide range of applications. Retail, travel, real estate, marketing — this list can be endless.

If you own a boutique or a shopping mall, offer AR navigation and your customers will not wander somewhere searching for a specific item, but go directly to the place where they can buy it. Customers choose brands that save their time and provide impeccable service.

Here at AVRspot, we developed an AR wayfinding app, called ARguide, that allows hosts to provide their guests with necessary information about home appliance location within the apartment, how-to-use instructions, or any other hidden items guests might need to know when staying in a house. If you want to know how AR wayfinding works we encourage you to join our team of beta testers and be one of the first to try the app for free.

See also: ARGuide: Augmented Reality Assistant for Real Estate

What Should You Do Next

First, analyze how can you show your customers that you care and let your app be valuable.  Find out, how you can build an emotional connection and make the most of it. It will bring loyalty and trust, that later will be associated with your name.

Despite its steep surge, AR is still so new that there is a great chance to engage people with unique experiences in the augmented world. Being a significant part of the customer’s daily life is one of the most effective, but least utilized marketing strategies. If you are considering or planning an AR experience for the brand promotion, please contact us and we’ll tell you more about the possibilities wayfinding offers and help you improve your current user journeys.

Today, businesses need to be able to create a memorable embodied experience, so that users were impressed by what they see and wanted to invest money. This is exactly where virtual reality comes into play, enabling landowners to offer lifelike presentations conveying the sense of belonging to the places potential home buyers could live in. One of our customers, an enterprise from the US, needed to create a VR experience for the new suburb community. They required a guided bike tour to enable future community members to virtually ride through the large greenway park and experience of what it will be like when finished. So, we came up with an idea of using a Bezier Curve capable of handling the challenge. In this article, we will cover the bike route implementation process as well as the pitfalls we had to overcome along the way.

What is the Bezier Curve?

A Bezier curve is a mathematically defined curve applied in two-dimensional graphics applications. The curve is defined by four points: the initial position and the terminating position and two separate middle points.

Why Using Bezier Curve Is An Answer

It is clear that setting points manually cannot work in this situation. The task was to create the VR bike ride simulation experience that would last 3.5-5 minutes total. To model a specific route for the cyclist in VR, we generated a curve that would simulate that path. As combinations of linked Bézier curves can be used to generate “paths” we decided to apply this method. This is how we did it.

An important first step in route implementation was a creation of an editor extension in Unity, where we would generate a curve. At first sight, it seemed that the task was done. But computer graphics recognizes only data points, so we converted that curve into the set of points. We used the curve we had created before and defined its points.

Due to particular time frames bike should move with the same speed, thus data points must be equidistant. So we applied one more method – the Linear interpolation.

To place points evenly, we converted curve length into the appropriate amount of points. The more points you use the more accurate the line will match Bezier curve (we used around 100 points). If the two known points are given by the coordinates, the linear interpolant is the straight line between these points. By having a set of data points we defined linear interpolants between each pair of data points. By knowing the curve length we found out where to put each next point.

After setting points on the same distance, we obtained the route for VR bike ride.

What’s next?

Well, the results are encouraging. And there is a long way we can go further to implement the whole community in VR. As for now, we are working on 3D models of roads, vegetation, and home types, so stay tuned! Some new challenges are coming!

See also: Augmented Reality Fitness Apps and How We Develop Them

Related: How Much Does VR Training Simulator Development Cost?