ARea | Devpost

Layout of the tile
Low fidelity testing with geospatial anchor #3
Low fidelity testing with geospatial anchor #1
Low fidelity testing with geospatial anchor #2

Inspiration

As avid travelers, we recognize the value of immersing oneself in the local culture of a new place. We love to make our must-visit lists, but the challenge, however, lies in discovering and engaging with events happening locally. On one of our trips to Rome, after a hectic day of covering the most famous places while walking through the streets, we were led to a plaza called Piazza del Popolo where ‘TIM Summer Hits’ a music show was happening with hundreds of people. We were lucky to have come across it, we would have easily missed it had we not gone to that particular plaza. All of us had a great evening listening to Italian pop. One of the best memories we have from the trip. That made us realize that the most memorable moments often stem from the unexpected, the spontaneous, and the local. What if there was a way for travelers to know what's happening around them at any given point in time? It was this recognition that fueled our inspiration to create ARea—an Augmented Reality Exploration Experience is designed to transform the way we engage with and embrace the richness of our surroundings.

What it does

ARea is an innovative AR-based experience designed to help users discover and engage with events happening in real-time within their proximity. The app utilizes geolocation of users and Augmented Reality to present users with a list of things happening around them, from (example) street theatre to poetry shows, letting them decide to immerse themselves in the local culture rather than typical tourist things.

1.AR Exploration: ARea provides users with an immersive AR experience, overlaying information about nearby events onto their device screens based on their real-world surroundings. It contains details like the genre of the event, timings, distance, and finally a poster that they can click to get redirected to trusted booking sites.

2.Real-time Event Feed: The experience can aggregate information from various sources to offer a real-time feed of events, activities, and cultural happenings within a radius that can be defined by the user.

3.360-Degree Tile Display: Users can view tiles representing events in different directions, providing a comprehensive overview of what's happening around them.

4.Quick Booking: ARea facilitates seamless booking ensuring users can swiftly secure their spots for chosen activities from trusted sources. Simply click on the poster of the event and voila!

How we built it

The experience uses Adobe Aero Geospatial Creator to locate the user and display the events around the user.

Challenges we ran into

1.Optimizing User Experience Flows: "If it's complicated a user won't open it again" Keeping that in our mind we had to rethink our design a lot of times in order to make it seemless and quick to understand.

2.Photorealistic Tiles: The lack of availability of photorealistic tiles in our location posed a challenge in testing our experience. That led us to contact our friends living in regions where this was available and ask for their help to carry out the testing, it also made us realize how useful it would be to scale the idea and develop it further. It could not only be used by a traveler but in fact, but even the people living there. Most of us like to have a good time on the weekend or after work. ARea could be useful tool to find something!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

-We are proud to have come up with a solution that is simple and easy to get started with. Providing contextual real-time information is cool! If developed further this might be a life saver for our next trip!

-Being in our final year of our bachelor's degree, doing our final thesis which is due in two weeks from now, and working on this challenge was tricky and exhausting but we did it!

-Overcoming the challenge of absent photorealistic tiles in India. & turning it into an opportunity to user test.

What we learned

The project's development led us to valuable insights into the synergy between AR and real-time data, highlighting the potential for creating engaging and practical solutions for users and how we can make use of technology to make our lives easier. Time management was another skill, we had to carry out this project in an agile manner, and we were able to do so.

What's next for ARea

Further advancements in ARea could be:

1.Collaborations with Local Businesses: Partnerships with local businesses and event organizers for exclusive promotions, discounts, and curated experiences, which not only enrich the user experience but also support & empower local communities.

2.Wearable Device Compatibility: Explore compatibility with wearable devices to provide users with a hands-free, augmented reality experience, allowing them to navigate and discover events effortlessly while on the move.

3.User Experience: Making it more intuitive and thinking about micro-interactions. Potential of haptics in the experience

4.Accessibility Exploring along the lines of how can we create an equally rich AR experience to be more inclusive of the visually impaired.