BENGALURU: T uVivek Jain, an IT professional for the past 13 years, recently launched an augmented-reality app for arts — FlippAR — at Akanksha 2016 on Women’s Day.
Previously he was part of an IT company called StrAPP business solutions and his new app FlippAR is an offshoot.
“There is a massive search on mobile phones to access information, while on art. So we wanted to make art more interactive by enhancing the experience where the user points his phone towards an art and information is received regarding that piece.”
Jain started with the app in August 2015.
“We’re part of startup accelerator called NUMA which is at Church street and currently we’re a setup in Bengaluru,” says Jain. “I had worked with a lot of retailers earlier and there was a constant urge or rather, need to bend the user engagement. And so we stumbled across something called Augmented Reality.”
As an example, an art or painting will have information or a story behind it which an artist would wish for his potential audiences to know. So, the viewer has to simply point her phone towards the art and it identifies the object and gives her the required data.
It is basically, enhancing the whole experience on something which is not real.
The information is provided by the artist.
“This is a web portal where artist can go put up their painting and type down the information required. So it takes only 3 minutes to set it up,” says Jain. “We’re starting to get artists to sign up and start using the platform.”
There was a lot of data to be collected before this was launched.
“For us to figure out the whole user experience, we built a base product and got a lot of feedback for it, which was incorporated into the final product,” says Jain. “We had to run around a lot and talk to people which was a major challenge. So far the response has been great. We are working with Vishweshwariah Museum on another project which will be launched in March.”
The next challenge is to win downloads.
Augmented Reality is the future, says Jain. “Facebook, Apple, Google have invested in augmented reality and virtual reality,” he says.
“The advantage being from two perspectives, from an artist perspective and from an aesthete’s perspective. For someone who engages with their art, this is the easiest and fastest way since mobile phones are being used by everyone. It gives them the contextual information and also could help with personalisation.”
Right now the group is focussed on getting a lot of app downloads and getting artists to sign up on the platform.