AUGMENTED REALITY:

New Opportunities for Product Designers

Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers

3 Introduction
TABLE OF
CONTENTS 4 Rethinking Product Design

5 Expert Insights

6 Making Design Reviews More Efficient

8 Is It Safe?

9 Untapped Opportunities

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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers

INTRODUCTION

You might have seen augmented reality while looking Augmented Reality (AR) is an interactive
for furniture or shoes. With AR, you can place digital
experience of a real-world environment whose
products in the real world for a sense of context and
scale without ever seeing the physical object. It’s the elements are ‘augmented’ by digital information.”
ultimate no-risk try-before-you-buy experience. - Wikipedia
Gaming, Major League Baseball, museums, tattoo
artists—everybody seems to be getting into the AR
game lately.

Even product development companies. In this eBook,

you’ll see how AR is already transforming product
designs, read what visionaries have to say about its
future, and pick up a few tips on how your company
can start using it in their projects today to
communicate their most complex ideas more quickly
and securely.

A man demonstrates alternative windshields for a snowmobile

using AR.

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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers

RETHINKING PRODUCT DESIGN

When it comes to seeing products in context, AR offers

unprecedented opportunities. Consider the following:

• Say your company is in the business of designing

bicycles. You and your team build a model in 3D
CAD software, create an AR experience from the
CAD model, and then view it “out in nature.” Does
the new design “sell itself”? What do customers think
of it? How does it compare to other real-world
models on the retail floor?
Engineers and consumers can both use AR to visualize how
• Continuing with the example above, you can products will look in real-world settings.
compare and contrast existing models side by side
with new ideas. Does the new model fit the space • Some visionaries say that someday designers will be
better? With augmented reality, your company can able to put on a pair of AR glasses and inspect a full-
answer questions like these without ever building a size 3D digital model from anywhere. In the future,
physical prototype. (We’ll talk even more about designers will push and pull on a model without
using AR for design reviews in the following pages.) keyboards or a mouse. “Imagine if you could see a
model, actual size, in your studio,” says one PTC
executive. “Walk around to see it at any angle, and
even do a virtual fly through.”

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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers

EXPERT INSIGHTS

In the eBook, 10 Expert Insights, industry analysts describe

how product design is changing. Not surprisingly, CIMData sees a growing role for both virtual
augmented reality comes up frequently. and augmented reality in the way CAD
modeling will be both enhanced and
“The current status quo is a flat screen with vaguely
accurate 3D renderings built into your design system,” says leveraged, changing the way products are
Al Dean, editor-in-chief of DEVELOP3D Magazine. “While designed and supported.”
the mechanics of that mean that this will always be the Thomas A. Gill and Ken Versprille, PhD, CIMdata
majority of your working days and interaction with designs
as they progress, we’ll soon have a more immersive set of
tools that afford us greater interaction with products in
development.”

Dean thinks that VR and AR headsets may be a part of

many companies’ toolkit. Design engineers “might be
strapping on a VR headset for a walk around your product
iteration or an augmented reality headset that gives
insight into that same product in the context of the real
world.“

Meanwhile, analysts at CIMdata predict AR will impact the

development process in multiple ways.

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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers

MAKING DESIGN REVIEWS MORE EFFICIENT

1. Reduce development cycle time. For example, an
Breaking Down Barriers engineering team can superimpose a CAD model of a
construction machine in the terrain of its intended outdoor
Design engineers, though intimately familiar with setting. This richer context can help teams make sound
advanced digital design capabilities, have remained design decisions earlier in the development cycle—
speeding the path to create and test a more mature
separated from their models by a computer monitor.
physical prototype.
AR breaks down the barrier to 3D; an engineer can use
AR to superimpose a model on the physical world.
2. Improve product quality. Design engineers can use AR to
How does that benefit a company? Three ways: superimpose a CAD model over a physical prototype to
compare how well the digital and physical models match.
Volkswagen uses this method today in its digital design
reviews to catch any anomalies between the virtual and
physical designs.

3. Provide data to fuel next-gen product design. Finally,

combined with data driven design, AR-enabled products
with embedded sensors can harvest unique streams of data
and analytics on how users interact with these products
under real-world conditions. The resulting insights then
appear directly on the AR model, informing next-gen
product design and giving teams a competitive edge and a
clearer path to creating products that meet customer
needs. (See the video on this page.)
Harvard Business Review featured an AR experience in the article Why Every
Organization Needs an Augmented Reality Strategy. Click image to see video.

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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers
MAKING DESIGN REVIEWS MORE EFFICIENT
A Typical Presentation . . .
Here’s a real-life example of AR in product development
from Anthony Bayerl of EAC:
“Recently I was part of a design review with our
engineers. They were presenting different approaches to
solve a problem for one of our customers. It was a series of
the typical design presentation: PowerPoint, screen grabs,
talking, drawing on the whiteboard...rinse and repeat.
A ThingMark on a piece of paper on the ground triggers an AR
experience on this man’s iPad.
Bringing Design Reviews to Life
Then a designer came in and slapped a two-inch hexagon
printed on a piece of paper down on the conference
room table. What came next changed everything.”
“Rather than looking at a screen I was asked to grab an
iPad and point it at the hexagon or “ThingMark" on the
table. All of a sudden the design was in front of me, sitting
on the table.
“This new approach allowed me to interact with the
design like never before. I was walking around the model,
zooming and panning, and looking inside the part.
“Augmented reality brought the design
review (and the people in the room) to life.”
Anthony Bayerl, EAC
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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers
IS IT SAFE?
In the example on the previous page, engineers shared a
ThingMark with their colleagues, using a free download to
their smartphone or tablet. The new technology wowed
everybody. And it made activities like design reviews a
breeze.
But it also presented a new challenge, especially for
security-minded companies. Who was seeing the model?
And who were they showing it to?
A man wears AR glasses to experience digital models in the physical world.
“In some fields, R&D costs are escalating, while market
opportunities are shrinking … theft of a competitor’s
trade secret might promise a more certain path
to quick profit,” warns Deloitte in a recent article.
But there’s good news: With AR you can protect your
ideas when you pass around CAD models. In fact,
new technologies like Creo AR Design Share make
experiences easier to share, without oversharing.
Here’s how it works. Instead of a ThingMark, you
generate a link that others can use to view your model
in the Vuforia View App. Use Creo AR Design Share to
specify who can see the experience presented by the
link. Then simply email the link.
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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers

UNTAPPED OPPORTUNITIES

Some Final Ideas

Look for opportunities to use AR in the following areas of

product development:

• Design support and collaboration. During the design

phase, use AR to promote collaboration

• Production, operations, and sales. Generate easy-to-

follow production plans and work instructions
• User experiences. Your customers can use AR to
successfully assemble, install, troubleshoot, and maintain
your products
A short video shows how to turn 3D models into AR experiences using
PTC’s Creo AR Design Share, Creo. To download the viewer, look for
Vuforia View in your favorite app store.

For more information on augmented reality in Creo AR

Design Share, check out the video on this page, and then
visit https://www.ptc.com/en/products/cad/creo/augmented-reality
To start turning your digital models into AR experiences,
keep scrolling.
© 2018, PTC Inc. (PTC). All rights reserved. Information described herein is furnished for
informational use only, is subject to change without notice, and should not be taken as a
guarantee, commitment, or offer by PTC. PTC, the PTC logo, and all PTC product names and
logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of PTC and/or its subsidiaries in the United
States and other countries. All other product or company names are property of their
respective owners. The timing of any product release, including any features or functionality, is
subject to change at PTC’s discretion.

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Augmented Reality: New Opportunities for Product Designers

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