RESEARCH
As part of my initial research I looked at other forms of augmented design , Labyrinth by Mark Wallinger was one that particularly caught my eye. It was a simple concept, design that revolved around journeys and travelling and consisted of a range of screen prints of these mazes. These are part of a collection that can be documented through the use of an app. This allows the audience to view the ones they have passed and scanned.
I found it confusing at first to get my head around ‘augmented design’, I looked at as many different examples as I could to fully grasp it. The Lacoste one was one of my favourites with a concept that has real potential. Allowing the viewers/shoppers to see what items of footwear looks like on them gives them more confidence in ordering items online through the app and being to decide on what they like. Making a video part of a campaign is something that also seemed to be really successful. The One Direction campaign that involved a large number of famous brands and their products, heavily relied on video to impress their viewers. Using a scanner feature on the app they could reveal a video of the band that was a ‘one off’ video. This not only made it sound unique but also allowed the audience to feel as though they were uncovering something that could then be seen digitally in front of them and allowed them to keep on their smartphone, this adds a personal touch.
I did a survey to see how many people between the age of 12 18 had certain devices. I chose to ask this age range because then I felt that it covered the children who would be interacting with my campaign. My results showed that far more children actually had multiple smart devices and only 1 person said they had none. I want to make one of my products a group project where only device would be needed.
To begin with I looked into apps that used augmented design and used a scanner as one of their features. Scan apps are something that I have always found useful, they always have a real purpose and are able to provide you with real and helpful information. They are often used as price comparison or product information primarily. However I feel like it is such a useful function that it could be used in many other ways. As my campaign was aimed at teenager I felt it would be a good idea to have a ‘fun’ element about it, I wanted to include a board game that required a digital attachment. I looked at original and long standing board games such as Monopoly and carefully studied the layouts formats and rules. I took into consideration what worked so successfully that these games had stuck around for such a long period of time. When I was looking into this I found that there were very little games that included both a board and physical pieces and a digital device. I feel like their is a huge gap in the market for this as it is entirely achievable and most people both young and old have a compatible device for a game like this. There have been a few games designed in this way but none of them have really been very popular or advertised much. I think that their needs to be a reason for having a digital enhancement within the game rather than it just being their for the sake.