As augmented reality and interactive print continue to grow, it is becoming clear that many more people now understand that a whole new world is emerging. We now have designers and engineers specifically working on AR projects, and with that comes and increasing amount of theory and best practices for AR user experience.

We recently saw this article by UX Magazine about augmented reality and user experience and we noticed how it related to interactive print in some places. In the article, authors Olli Siebelt and Michael Marina provide some starting guidelines for thinking about user experience when developing augmented reality experiences.

Consider Context
They mention first to categorize and plan your project based on the intended use case, and the same can be said for developing an interactive print campaign with Layar. 

It is important to consider differences in context when enhancing a magazine page versus and billboard ad or product packaging. The experience needs to feel natural to users, and what feels natural will vary between these different scenarios.

Real World Testing
Another tip – to go out and test in the real world before creating your project – can also be translated to interactive print campaigns. It was important for Layar Partner Limebizz to know the environment in which one of its latest campaigns would be displayed.

The bright orange mystery crate displayed in Antwerp’s central station was a very unique use of interactive print for users. Instead of holding a magazine in their hand, they were standing amidst a busy train station with varying lighting throughout the day. The results were terrific!

Design for Mobile
And finally, having a eye for design for the small screen is one of the big points made in the AR UX article. This also applies to interactive print. It’s very important that visual assets are easy to view and read on a mobile device, and that any web-based content linked to from your print is mobile-friendly.

See More In Our Guide!
These are just a few of the great tips we provide in our comprehensive Best Practices Guide! Have a look at the steps you can take toward more effective interactive print campaign creation, including:

• Getting started with interactive print
• Best practices for the Layar Creator
• Concepting your campaign
• “Dos and Don’ts” for instruction pages, calls-to-action and more
• Testing your campaign
• Integrating interactive print into your workflow
• And more!

It’s that time of year again - the holiday season - and while many still send the same old Christmas cards out to their families and loved ones, a few ambitious companies out there are taking the opportunity to create a more engaging print to digital experience with Layar.

We’ve noticed several Christmas Card campaigns being published, so here is a handful of some that caught our eye. Flip through the slideshow below to see the cards, which have all been augmented with Layar - some even with our new dynamic widgets. 

Click the thumbnails below to view larger versions of the images for scanning with Layar.

Christmas Cards are a great opportunity to add digital content to printed material, whether it’s company videos and slideshows like the ones above, or a personal message to someone special. Sign into the Layar Creator today to get started making your own AR Christmas Card!!

Special thanks to Mic-Media, Orange Barrel Media, Kennispunt Oost, Colour Tech, Drukkerij van Deventer and Reclamebureau REM for allowing us to feature their cards on the Layar blog!

The following blogpost is from Claire Boonstra, co-founder and head of BizDev at Layar.

Recently, Layar has set its focus squarely on making print interactive with digital content by activating the pages of magazines, newspapers, flyers and posters with videos, links to websites and the ability to share to social networks.

In case you are not yet familiar with the possibilities of interactive print, have a look at some of our recent campaigns with VPRO, LINDA., What’s Next and vtwonen.

Interactive print creates a new business opportunity for organizations that use the paper medium, such as publishers, advertisers, and brands with their own catalogues. As these organizations define the business case for interactive print, a new demand for detailed metrics is emerging.

We have crafted a whitepaper, titled Layar shows significant reach, conversion and click-through rates from paper to digital content. In it we include the key metrics defining the market potential for interactive paper, gathered from both external research agencies and our own internal metrics.

We provide figures for how many people are…

• able to use Layar - The number of people who have a smartphone capable of running Layar.
• using Layar now - The number of people who have installed and use Layar.
• using Layar with print - The number of people using Layar to view content on a print publication, or as we’re calling it, “conversion.”
• using Layar to click through - The number of people clicking through to the digital content from the paper, also known as “click-through rate” or “CTR.”

Highlights of our research include:

• Depending on the region, 8% - 38% of the global population currently owns a smartphone capable of running Layar. This is expected to grow to as high as 60% by 2016.
• The Layar application leads the market with over 20 million installations and between 2 and 3 million users who open the application each month (active users). Other AR apps see lower penetration figures on both Android and iPhone platforms.
• Magazine and newspaper campaigns see roughly 1% of total readers interacting with digital content via Layar.
• Of all digital content displayed in print, roughly 20% are clicked through to the underlying action (e.g., video, web-shop, mobile site, Facebook page, etc.).

To learn more, download the full report and dive into the numbers!

There aren’t a lot of publicly available statistics on the use of mobile augmented reality, let alone its use with interactive print. There has been a lot of hype around the subject and it’s time to just talk numbers.

With this document, we are aiming to kick-start a discussion about metrics and results achieved both with AR and with interactive print. We would love to hear your questions and remarks, so please leave us a comment below!

Today in the App Store and Android Play Store you’ll find our latest update: Layar 6.2!

You may not notice any changes right away, but there is one significant addition. In this version of Layar, we’re introducing what we’re calling AR Video.

Essentially, now items around you that are normally augmented with Layar Vision content (magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, brochures and other print media) can now come alive with video right on top of them!

Imagine reading the newspaper on your way to work and watching as the box scores on the sports page turn into video highlights to catch you up on the game! With Layar 6.2 and AR Video, this is now possible.

Developers making Layar Vision content can now easily add videos to these experiences quickly and easily. Check out the video below to see a quick demo of the power of AR Video!

Our friends over at Tribal DDB - a global digital advertising agency - recently employed the help of Layar Vision to enrich one of its projects. The project is a desk reference “calendar” that the company sends to prospective clients to inform them all about mobile.

It’s called “Mobile Engagement: A Guide to the Mobile World,” and now with Layar’s help, the calendar comes to life with augmented information within the pages. In the video above, we sat down with Joeri Kiekebosch, who worked on the project, to get an idea of how and why they chose Layar Vision.

“We had the feeling that a static desk reference was… static. And we’re a digital agency that does digital stuff, so we needed something that made it interactive,” Kiekebosch told us. “If you talk about mobile, you should be able to do something with your mobile. Why not scan the calendar with your mobile and see extra content on top of that?”

“There are a lot of big shots walking around here, and these people kind of like geekiness but are not geeks. AR is perfect for these people,” he adds. “Everybody has an iPhone, they were like ‘Oh this is cool, this is fun!’ They got it installed easily, they understood it. For these kinds of people it really worked.”

Take a look at our interview with Joeri to see the calendar in action!