How Augmented Reality Is Helping Us Do More With Less

We are living in a world governed by constraints. Constraints on time, resource, budget and even physical space all play key parts in how modern day businesses are functioning and we need to be savvy in how we use these constraints to our advantage, as opposed to letting them limit us.

Augmented reality is a technology that can enable us to do more with less. Particularly in regards to training and educational solutions. It allows us to visually communicate ideas in ways that are more intuitive and personal than simply reading a manual or watching a tutorial, but provides a much lower cost solution in the long term than using human resources to educate and troubleshoot.

Our Work With Sealed Air Group

Sealed Air are a $7.7 billion diversified industrial company operating from over 200 locations worldwide. Their training and troubleshooting needs as a company are vast, extensive and costly, which is why they are constantly seeking new ways to innovate around their training methods in order to optimise the experience and simultaneously reduce costs and the need for expensive resources.

We were approached by the Sealed Air Innovations Team and tasked with the challenge of “How do you reduce the cost of supporting products which are found in chains such as McDonalds, Hilton and IKEA but increase effectiveness?”

Our proposal was to create an augmented reality training platform where users could scan products and watch augmented 3D demonstrations showing them how to set up and maintain those products.

In theory, it sounded like the perfect offering. However it soon became clear that we weren’t going to be able to create a ‘one size fits all’ solution. We were going to have to work around problems such as varying internet connection strengths and language differences between regions. We needed to create something that was going to be flexible, visual, that didn’t require internet connection and that was suitable for global distribution. Easy right?

We concluded that the best way to meet all of the needs of Sealed Air was to create an AR mobile application. This way we would be able to provide a platform that could be easily obtained on a large scale, that didn’t require constant internet connection and that we would be able to tailor to suit the language requirements of each region.

This solution worked incredibly well and provided a personalised and intuitive experience for staff world wide. Users were able to learn about the products in a visual and interactive way that they could refer back to at any time, regardless of their location or internet availability. We also included extra troubleshooting facilities and progress data recording functionalities for staff who were able to access internet connection regularly.

In conclusion, we were not only able to improve the staff training experience and reduce costs using AR, but we were also able to provide a platform capable of recording personal training data that provided an accurate reflection of staff knowledge and helped identify key strengths and weaknesses.

Want to find out more about our work with Sealed Air? Read the case study here.