The Four Rs

Ever since the advent of VR, AR, QR, et al., there has been a swirl of acronyms, and as the various technologies and methodologies proliferate, it has become common to conflate things like AR and VR, as well as what is more correctly called “interactive print.” Let’s define our terms. 

QR (Quick Response)

QR codes are similar in practice to the ubiquitous UPCs (Universal Product Codes) that have adorned consumer items since the 1970s. Also called “two-dimensional codes,” the pattern of black-and-white squares acts like the bars in a barcode. Invented in 1994 in Japan by Denso WAVE to track cars throughout the manufacturing process, QR codes spread to more and more applications, especially advertising and marketing. After the advent of the smartphone, QR codes became a quick way to get mobile users to access a website. Although graphic designers are not fans (they’re not the most aesthetically pleasing design element in the world), it has reached the point where users don’t need a separate app to read them. Just aim your iPhone camera at the code and it will be read automatically; this capability is also available on Samsung phones as of June 2019 with the Samsung Galaxy S10 as well as a few other recent Android models. Native QR code readers have been built into Japanese phones for years, which has made use of these codes popular there. When you have to use a separate app, it can be inconvenient and discourage users from scanning these codes.

Example of a QR code; just scan it with your smartphone camera if you have one with native QR code scanning—otherwise, give it a try with a QR code reader app.

Virtual Reality (VR)

VR first appeared on everyone’s radar in the early 1990s. It uses head mounted displays (HMDs) and often gloves and other wearable apparatus—usually pretty clunky-looking ones, at least so far in its development—to generate realistic images, sounds and other sensations that simulate a user’s physical presence in a virtual or imaginary 360 environment. It is a completely immersive experience. The early adoption of VR technology was in education and entertainment, which is where it has remained. The technology still needs a more elegant solution than HMDs before you will see wide adoption, especially among consumers, although technologies like Google Glass and display technologies that more closely resemble traditional eyewear may help. 

Virtual reality (VR) is effected using a head mounted display and either gloves or some other kind of motion controller. Here, the European Space Agency shows how astronauts might use VR as part of their training. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.)

Augmented reality (AR)

This is where the lines get blurry. The best example of true Augmented Reality at work is Pokémon Go, a game that uses a player's mobile device and GPS to locate, capture, battle and train virtual creatures that appear on the screen as if they were in the real world. Essentially, with AR, you are aiming your smartphone camera at a real-world environment and an app overlays information on it—augmenting that reality. In terms of print, an emblematic example of AR is the IKEA catalog via which users can capture an image of a room and use the IKEA app to place realistic images of furniture in the room to see how it will look or fit. With Apple’s launch of ARKit, its AR developer’s kit, the company pointed to IKEA as one of the first implementation examples. SAi recently launched VirtualSign, a sign-proofing app for sign shops in which they can aim their smartphone camera at a surface and an FPO image of a sign will be overlaid to allow signmakers to see how a particular sign will look. 

SAi, makers of Flexi, the leading design software for the signmaking industry, recently released VirtualSign, an augmented reality app which creates a virtual representation of how signs will look in-situ in the real world.

LEGO is another example: not only do LEGO boxes feature AR content that can display a virtual image of the completed kit, but the company also recently released LEGO Hidden Side, an augmented reality-enhanced LEGO play theme where kids must turn a haunted world back to normal, one ghost at a time. It is the only play experience available today that fully and seamlessly integrates augmented reality (AR) with physical construction to reveal a hidden world of interactive play.

According to MJ Anderson, chief experience officer of AR software firm RealityBLU, there are two types of augmented reality—markerless and marker-based.

“Apple or Google have focused on markerless AR," he said. "The interaction with the content is not triggered by a scan of a printed document; instead, it is user-directed, where the app and camera are used to detect a flat surface or a physical location. The user’s ability to see something on their phone is based on a scenario that is tied to location and circumstance. The print world is focused on marker-based AR and stands to benefit by defining its usefulness in conjunction with what they are already doing in the world—adding value and creating additional revenue streams for their businesses.”

The term AR is often used—in our view, erroneously—to refer to what is more properly called “interactive print” or—to coin our own term...

Print Reality (PR)

This class of solutions includes technologies like Ricoh’s Clickable Paper, HP’s Link, Blippar/Layar, and solutions from Linkz and Stampatech, among others. (There is a lot of churn in this space and apps are being introduced, discontinued and acquired with great frequency so it’s difficult to keep an article like this up to date.)

There are two methodologies for making print interactive. In one, like HP Link, invisible codes are embedded in a printed piece or on a package, and users can scan that code with a smartphone app to access additional information. In another (like Ricoh’s Clickable Paper or Blippar/Layar), a unique image or string of text is scanned into a database so that when the corresponding app reads that image or text, it finds it in the database and launches the appropriate content. It extends the value of print with the addition of this extra information, makes it interactive, and provides the ability to swap out information as conditions change—because the back end that supports provision of content can be updated without any need to change the printed piece. Essentially, the aim is to make print part of the “Internet of Things.” 

PR or interactive print technologies like, in this case, HP’s Link, can be used to add hyperlinks to the printed page, such as in a book. Readers can be clued into the existence of these links either by specifying it in an image caption and/or by using the standard blue, underlined text that has become the default signifier of a hyperlink. These links can launch online videos or other rich media content.

The challenge, as we explained in the main feature, is that, save for QR codes, AR and PR require specific apps—and there are still too many competing apps to thwart user frustration. VR still has the cumbersome hardware problem to overcome. However, these versions of “reality” are evolving rapidly, and we would expect many if not most of these issues to resolve themselves fairly quickly. —Cary Sherburne and Richard Romano