Eliminating first-day-of-school anxiety with AR-powered navigation
Showing up on campus for the first day of school and not being able to find your classroom, the student resource center or cafeteria is a surefire way to experience some real anxiety. To eliminate this nightmare situation for students at the South Mountain Community College, CM&D helped the institution develop a digital solution that eliminates these challenges before they ever become a reality.
Goal
Develop a digital tool that eliminates anxiety associated with the first day of school.
Action
Blend mobile navigation technology with the latest in augmented reality to create an informative and engaging digital campus experience.
Outcome
An interactive AR-powered mobile application complete with campus wayfinding, classroom navigation, access to student resources, and more.
Why Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality gives you the ability to offer users a truly unique digital experience. An experience that can be 3-4x more engaging and lead to better information retention compared to traditional static media. When developing a digital experience designed to engage with and educate students about their new college campus, what better way than an AR-powered mobile app?
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Interactive Storytelling
Experience Design
Working closely with both students and administrators, CM&D helped guide the project team through the entire product design lifecycle. By offering insight into industry best practices, managing the overall vision of the application, and providing professional UX/UI design services, CM&D was able to help the college create a truly stunning and easy-to-use mobile experience.
Creative Direction
No AR-powered application is complete without robust creative to back up the technical components of the experience. Leveraging the latest in digital navigation technology and 3D avatars, CM&D designed and developed an AR experience that allows students to easily find classrooms and resources across campus (complete with turn-by-turn wayfinding) while also getting to discover hidden ‘easter eggs’ strategically located across the grounds. Geo-fenced AR hotspots featuring a 3D college mascot who appears within these zones to share interesting information about the institution.
Immersive Development
Augmented Reality
The final experience would not have been possible without leveraging a powerful suite of distinct mobile technologies. CM&D developed the core application in Unity3D leaning on the latest MapBox SDK to provide mapping data and access to turn-by-turn navigation. The team customized the map to align with the college’s brand stands as well as integrated the geo-fenced hotspots to power the 3D AR college mascot ‘easter eggs’. To help round things out, CM&D also programmed an integration with Canvas, the school’s LMS system, and developed a survey tool that allows for the publication and distribution of student surveys in real-time.
Engagement
Back-End Support & Database Development
The application and survey tool are supported by a custom web back-end that allows administrators to easily publish new student surveys, collect response data and organize user information. To help ensure the college was able to maintain the application over time, CM&D developed the entire structure of the application to be easily maintainable.
Distribution Strategy & Development
Once development was complete, CM&D provided the college with hands-on team training detailing the structure of the application, the integrated technologies powering the navigation, and how to update the AR easter-eggs. Finally, CM&D developed and delivered robust product documentation and video content to help ensure both current and future students are able to understand and help maintain the application.
Surprise & Delight Customers with Social AR
