shopAR

We built an iOS Library and REST API allowing mobile retail apps to maximize conversions by displaying their products in AR within their own apps, simply by uploading 3D models to our API endpoints.

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Inspiration

Why settle for 2D when you can have 3D? As avid entrepreneurs and salesmen, we always strive for the ultimate sales tools to improve customer conversion. After recognizing that the majority of online shopping is done on mobile, we noticed a gap in the market. 2-dimensional images don't let customers truly experience a product before purchase point the way a 3-dimensional representation would, yet there are absolutely no easily-accessible libraries to integrate embedded Augmented Reality representations of products in the mobile app industry. As passionate mobile developers ourselves, we spent this weekend building an iOS library that enables other developers to do exactly this.

What it does

shopAR allows developers to upload 3D representations of their products to our REST API and instantly retrieve and display them to users through an Augmented Reality portal, which our library integrates into their existing iOS app. In return, clients get to better experience products before purchasing in a significantly more interactive and better-converting way.

How we built it

We began by building our REST API in node.js and express.js, using React for front-end web. We connected it to an AWS s3 bucket for file storage, and deployed it on Heroku. Developers can either directly make POST requests to our API or upload files via drag-and-drop in our React front-end. We then developed an iOS CocoaPod for Swift with a variety of functions that interact with our API (documented in more detail on our github), including a file retrieval system connecting s3 to the iOS app via signedURL request. Finally, we built an iOS Demo App utilizing our technology and displaying the ease of integration. It is included in our github as well.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled working with a native apple filetype .scn for 3D object representations, since it was not well documented. We also struggled with latency issues in ensuring that our servers allowed for the fastest possible file transfers. Finally, making a library for other developers was something neither of us had attempted before, and posed more organizational challenges than we anticipated.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of publishing the library as an open source tool on CocoaPods.com, the leading library host for iOS. We also managed a very large stack, including front-end, back-end, mobile, and code distribution. We are also proud of introducing a new tool that can greatly contribute to the mobile retail industry.

What we learned

In a technical sense, we learned that it is extremely difficult to make an open source library very accessible and easy to integrate into existing projects, considering the varying scopes of peoples' projects. More importantly, we learned resilience, the power of planning, and the perks of sleep-deprivation.

What's next for shopAR

We seriously plan to pursue this as we progress through our Junior year. We have big ideas about potential retail partners, supporting more file formats, integrating 3D scanning tools, and much more!

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