CUSTOM BRANDED GOOGLE CARDBOARD VR VIEWERS

Businesses are always trying to find better ways of telling their customers about their products. “Better ways” mean not just a more realistic user experience, but a more affordable one too, for both enterprises and their customers. Up till now, that has been a real challenge. After all, how do you deliver an authentic user experience for a new car, a holiday destination, or a business conference center, without picking the potential users up and putting them directly into the environment concerned? After decades of different attempts, the answer – individual branded Google Cardboard – may be simpler than anyone dared to think.

The key concept for companies seeking to convince a prospect about their offering is “immersive.” When a user can experience naturally, realistically, and fluidly a product or a service with the environment of that product or service, companies know they are halfway to making a sale. The idea of a test drive is not new. Neither, thanks to IT and mobile apps, is the idea of offering full user experience at very low marginal cost to the software vendors. Sooner or later, somebody had to connect up the dots and make that low-cost, fully functional, immersive test drive available to all.

That’s the idea behind custom branded Google Cardboard. First of all, smartphones running apps are widely used. Secondly, a simple, inexpensive viewer (the physical cardboard part) can be made for users to see a 3D image on their smartphones. Thirdly, the app running on the smartphone and seen by the user can respond to user instructions and automatically change the view as the user moves his or her head and viewer. Companies make their app, which is a one-time cost. Users acquire a viewer, which can also be offered as a branded or customized Google Cardboard give away.

New uses for Cardboard custom apps and promotions are increasing and for good reason. By providing its own branded viewer, an enterprise increases its exposure in the market. An attractive design, the enterprise’s logo, and a link for the app to be used printed on the viewer all boost brand recognition. It becomes easy for the prospective customer, subscriber, student or even patient to see what the product or service can do for them.

• Fashion and Apparel. 3D views of hot new fashion collections let customers see the articles from every angle. More than this however, taking fashion and apparel out to inspiring settings that can be experienced through a branded Google Cardboard viewer takes the whole promotion to a new level. For example, an alpine climbing jacket might look cool in a catalog, but a 360° view from a mountain climber’s backpack thanks to an app and a viewer shows customers not only what the jacket is, but also what they could be doing with it. Mountain gear maker Mammut now does this.
• Automobiles. Maybe those test drives that start and end at the dealer’s showroom are just a little too tame. After all, driving round the block is not the same as experiencing city, country, off-road or mountain environments. The bigger the price ticket, the more an immersive app and a branded give-away viewer make sense. Volvo already did this for its XC90 model, but the highway to innovative and immersive test drives can go further still. In addition, when a professional provider makes the branded viewers, they can become a very sleek reflection of the automobile manufacturer’s brand at very little extra cost.
• Construction. For those of you who still think building blueprints come in large paper rolls, it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Construction is already moving fast towards custom branded virtual reality viewers in the form of BIM or building information modeling. Software applications show building projects on screen in 2D, 3D and even 4D, as office blocks, malls, residences and more morph through timelines. It’s much easier for customers and project stakeholders to get excited about stereoscopic views of what they will be getting, especially when all they need is their smartphone, your app and your customized Cardboard viewer.
• Vacations. How will you offer a “test drive” to holidaymakers? Fly them to their destination? Alternatively, bring the destination to them with a 360° immersive Google Cardboard app for their smartphones, and your branded viewer. Let them see where they’ll go and what they’ll get, as they move through their vacation setting as though they were already there.
• Education. Education is a big-ticket item in several ways. Not only does it cost money to put together properly, but it also has a fundamental impact on the lives of those consuming it. Training, information and knowhow all need to be communicated in the best, most cost-effective way possible. Areas as diverse as medicine, mathematics, engineering and biochemistry can all benefit from 3D user experiences to show beating hearts, complex surfaces, industrial components and enzyme interactions in real time. Handing out inexpensive Cardboard viewers can change an educational experience forever.
• Healthcare. Guided 3D tours of clinics and hospitals can help staff to acclimatize and patients to feel confident that they will be in good hands. Add in apps for wellbeing exercises and explanations to show how treatments or operations solve different health problems, and customized Google Cardboard can help both public and private healthcare organizations to respond even better to patient needs and concerns.

Google, original inventors of Cardboard, has made the design of its viewer generally available. It’s simple enough for people to try making one for themselves. Yet for a convincing, reliable end-user experience in the domains described above and many others, it is also inexpensive enough for a competent supplier to offer enterprises a smart, branded Google Cardboard viewer of their own to give away as a promotional item. Virtual reality Viewers are no longer limited to those prepared to buy expensive technology, but is now truly available for all markets.