4 Aug 2023
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Mike Boland
Is AR the Inevitable Future of Commerce?
AWE USA 2023
Welcome back to AWE Talks, our series that revisits the most engaging content from AWE’s catalog of conference sessions. Now that AWE USA 2023 has concluded, we have a fresh batch of sessions to dive into.
This week, we spotlight AR's role in bringing dimension to retail spaces. Where will immersive shopping bring advantages over legacy technologies like GPS? Auki Labs' head of product Neil Redding breaks it down.
See the summarized takeaways below, along with the full session video. Stay tuned for more video highlights each week and check out the full library on awe.live and AWE’s YouTube Channel.
Speakers
Neil Redding, Head of Product, Auki Labs
– There's lots of talk about AR's benefits in consumer shopping.
– Beyond common refrains (AR tryons etc.) macro factors compel it.
– For example, vertical expansion is inherent in the evolution of cities.
– This makes cities "volumes, not areas," says Redding.
– This renders GPS insufficient to define positioning on 3 axes.
– Practical examples include accurate drone deliveries in tall buildings.
– Auki Labs' answer to gaining vertical dimension is Posemesh.
– This is a decentralized positioning service for spatial computing.
– There are many potential use cases but the starting point is retail.
– This is where the most demand and current pain points lie.
– Retailers are motivated towards better indoor positioning.
– This could be things like in-store wayfinding and product discovery.
– We're talking about positioning systems that help shoppers in 3 areas
– Discovery: finding things they didn't know they need.
– Search: Getting quick directions to the things they expressly need.
– Personalization: Customized and intelligent shopping experiences.
– Posemesh can help retailers in areas such as product placement.
– It also advances in-store analytics and retail media networks.
– The latter is all about delivering targeted content in store aisles.
– All this comes together in Auki Labs' Convergent technology.
– Tangible utilities like this are what made the iPhone cross the chasm.
– It's also inevitable in the evolutionary arc of spatial computing...
"Just like it was common wisdom in the late 1990s that everything that can be digital will be," said Redding, "we're confident that everything digital that can be more usefully manifested in physical space will show up there."
For more color from Redding, see the full video below. 
