Validation and research of your app idea from top to bottom to align the technology strategies with your business and process goal
Business/client context
Business/ client context
Our client is a serial entrepreneur from New Zealand. They created the concept of the business, but because of technical challenges, didn’t know how to pack his it onto the application.
Inspired by our article on ‘Image tracking with ARKit’ they wanted to create a product allowing users to create AR-enhanced live photo books. Krootl team helped to shape up the business strategy, as well as provided a technical solution to fit the idea.
Phable app allows users to design their own print products by choosing favorite videos from their phone’s gallery or cloud media storage and preserving these in the form of a print on a chosen item.
Pointing a camera on such a product would make it come to life, playing media selected by the user in Augmented Reality. This allows unique interactions with any print product and adds an additional layer of value to them – a way to preserve video memories in the form of physical items.
Even though AR has been around for a while now, it was only recently that the technology became sophisticated enough to be used in consumer products.
Phable was one of the first applications that capitalized on the AR hype with the first version released back in 2018.
Challenges
Early adoption of mobile augmented reality
Pointing a camera on such a product would make it come to life, playing media selected by the user in Augmented Reality. This allows unique interactions with any print product and adds an additional layer of value to them – a way to preserve video memories in the form of physical items.
On the spot app usage
Effortless media sharing between user gallery and showroom iPad app was a key problem for the roadshows and printing on the spot. Krootl tech team came up with a solution that is intuitively accessible. Initially, user is required to scan the QR to connect to the showroom iPad, this enables frictionless file transfer from the user’s phone to the Kiosk app in just a few taps.
Cross platform
To save client’s time and budget, we used crossplatform technology by Apple — MacCatalyst. It allows developers to design a single application that runs on iOS and Mac, this way, we were able to reuse the code written for the iOS client app inside the iPad Showroom and MacOS Admin panel apps.
Solutions
A marker-based augmented reality app for iOS and Android / MacOs admin panel / iPad Showroom application
Client App
Krootl developed an Augmented Reality camera module along with the classic e-commerce system functionality like shopping cart, checkout, product catalog etc. The application allows users to choose between various products with embedded playable augmented reality media picked from their media gallery. Payment is done via Apple Pay integration, which greatly reduces the checkout time and user friction. Various product customization options such as custom photo book cover editor, video trimming and editing allows users to fully realize their creative potential.
Showroom (iPad App)
iPad app is designed to be used “on the spot” — inside the print shop. Customers are able to go through the available items catalog and print their own media on top of any product. After the purchase, their media is connected to Phable Client and becomes live in AR.
To make the experience of uploading even 4k video painless for the user we developed a custom solution based on QR code scanning and direct WiFi data connection.
Admin panel CMS (Mac OS)
Mac OS app to support Phable Showroom and Phable Client. It serves as an admin panel aggregating all info about sales, users, helps to monitor order status, and respond to client questions and requests. We’ve built the app using MacCatalyst — this cross platform Apple tech allowed us to reuse logic that we created for the Showroom and Client apps, and therefore save client’s time and money.
Get in touch
Got a project in mind? We are eager to learn more about it!
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