For those visiting Decorex Africa, and those preparing to do so, imagining and reimagining the world of design is a key component of the event experience. Using AR to immerse audiences in that mode of thinking meant considering context and creating inspiration.

 

 

 

“The first step is to explore the possibilities and limitations of the technology to introduce augmented reality to an audience who may not have experienced it in this way before,” says Naasier. Inspired by work such as Nike’s fascinatingly fun NIKELAND and the richly detailed, AR-powered launch of OMSETYPE with the Agenda 2020 app, Scamp set about creating an app that places its audience in the midst of the event’s meaning, while needing little interaction from them – all the better to focus on absorbing the message. 

“Another important step was to consider the physical surroundings where the elements and objects would be experienced, and how that would affect the user experience. Our ultimate goal was to make it an effortless, intriguing experience,” Naasier says Rather than needing much in the way of a dedicated canvas onto which to transpose the words of the manifesto, the filter can be used in any area where there’s a bit of space around the user and their phone – outdoors or indoors, at the exhibition or elsewhere. Anyone with a smartphone that has a working camera and an internet connection will be able to enjoy the experience, with just Instagram or Facebook needed to access it.

Like Decorex Africa as a whole, the filters don’t exist just for the purpose of being enjoyable while they’re being experienced, but to inspire further thinking about building on existing creations. For the audience who steps into the heart of the Decorex manifesto using the effects, the thought that’s sparked should be, “Wow, I wonder what else is possible.”

If you’re in the mood to reimagine, why not try it out today?

 

 

 

 

 

To bring Decorex Africa to life for its audiences even before they step into the event, augmented reality (AR) proved the ideal tool. Naasier Adams of Scamp Studio, a multidisciplinary studio based in Cape Town and London, was at the helm of the project. 

“Decorex explored and shared a new level of engagement with its audience by making use of augmented reality featured on the Instagram filters section,” Naasier explains. As a relatively new technology that’s fast becoming mainstream thanks to the phenomenal success of games like Pokémon Go and the ubiquity of SnapChat and then Instagram filters, AR still has a novelty factor working in its favour, while needing little explaining to the average user. Naasier and the Scamp team were tasked with harnessing this uniquely appealing tech to the context of Decorex Africa: “Although the filter section has been mainstreamed by photo treatments and augmented reality filters projected onto faces, Decorex hired us to project more relevant content into the real world using Instagram filters.”

With the effects available to try out in the ‘filters’ section of Decorex Africa’s Instagram page, it’s possible to “project” the event’s manifesto into the area surrounding the user. With the words seemingly all around the user, the person reading the manifesto finds themselves reading it not from top to bottom on a flat page, but in the context of their immediate environment – in much the same way that design is best understood by experiencing it in person.