The abstraction of the medium of self expression is changing with technology. From Simple photo to Face Filters, users have more natural and tangible way of expressing themselves.

SnipAR takes it to another level where they can create snippets of immersive experience and share with their peers, who can recreate same experience in their space and both can interact as if standing next to each other. These experiences are tied to the physical space users are in so they can move around them as if physical objects.

SnipAR uses Augmented Reality technology with multiuser for making the experience lively and tangible.

Context and Design brief

Rohit is 2nd year engineering student. He owns a smart phone and is a regular social media user being active on whatsapp, Facebook, and Canva.
He used to design and create paper greeting cards as a young kid. He was an active member of science club making physical models.
After admission to college he hardly gets time to work on physical models, as study takes over his time.
Now he uses mobile apps to design and create greetings. He is very social and sends personal greetings to all his friends and family members. He makes sure all of his contacts are greeted on important days by his creations. He adds personal touch to all the greetings. He feels good when somebody appreciates his works and is motivated to create more.
By sharing these greetings Rohit is able to keep in touch with his social circle.
However, he still misses the tangible nature of physical models and wish if there was a way to quickly create models right from the comfort of his couch.

Design a mobile app that allows its users to quickly create 3d experiences that can be interacted in the physical space using latest technology.

Methodology

The objective of the project was to demonstrate technology capability while keeping user needs at forefront.
For this the fundamental principles of current state of Augmented Reality technologies were studied from research papers and what's been done with ARKit and ARCore
It was clear that since the technology is new, major focus has to be on content consumption than on creation. Also it is imperative that the content should represent user persona as close as possible. Self expression was picked as prime goal of delivering elevated User Experience. Based on general understanding and current active users of Instagram from age group of 15-20 were interviewed using standar questionnaire on their media creation and sharing habits.
The research data was then analyzed to derive set of important features for the product.

It was found that prime motivation of the media creation and sharing was to be well connected with social circle, while anticipating dexterity of physical space.