Introducing XR Hub team: Imarre
During summer and fall 2020, we are posting articles about our XR Hub teams on a weekly basis. These articles are based on interview questions, answered by the teams themselves. This is your chance to get to know our talented community, team by team!
Today we will tell you a little bit more about XR Hub team Imarre!
Imarre
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What does your team do?
“Imarre is one-man shop which tries to implement Augmented Reality (AR) in fields where there might be positive impact and great value for the society in a wider time scale.”
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What is the idea or the “mission” behind your team?
“There’s been a growing trend for parents who have difficulties or lack of time/interest (better times swiping IG – sorry kiddo, been there, done that) to read books for their children. This leads to another growing trend which is that boys don’t read enough or won’t read at all. It’s mainly a male gender problem. This then leads to more impactful problems for society, those same kids being cheated on the streets by criminals to join the criminal activities and then later in adulthood sentenced and wiped out from our society. This could have been prevented by reading books, as one of the main benefits are that it increases readers’ dialectics and prevents being credulous.
So the idea is to minimize the threshold for boys (and girls also!) of reading books by adding the “new” AR aspect into the process. But the AR book might not be a good idea to increase reading habits, since there’s a technical device (phone) included in the activity. Phones have a high success rate for distracting their users. This problem is the hardest part from users perspective – how on earth could an 8-year-old focus 100% in the book for 25 minutes when adults can’t cope for 3 seconds when the cash registrar has some issues in the shopping mall?”
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Tell us a little bit about your team members!
“We are a one-man-show building Augmented Reality (AR) products which includes art, story, personalization, positive impact and marketing.”
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What project are you currently working on?
“Imarre is currently building a prototype of a children’s book which has AR built inside the story, in which the readers can fly inside and experience the world in its full glory. The book will be downloadable and digital.”
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Why did you decide to join Helsinki XR Center’s XR developer hub?
“It was a great opportunity to meet up fellow XR developers and work in the same space. The space itself is fabulous, staff, devices, working place, all of it!”
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When did you join the XR Hub, and how long had your team existed before joining?
“Imarre joined XR Hub 3 weeks before the Coronavirus hit Finland and therefore there wasn’t much time to work in the space itself … There’s no team yet, only a single person show.”
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As a part of the XR Hub, how has your experience been so far?
“The weekly meetings have been great so far, there’s lots of useful info people share openly to each other.
Downside is that the Coronavirus situation affects where you can work, you can’t/shouldn’t work in the XR Hub.”
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What is the most interesting or exciting thing about ‘extended reality’?
“To think how and when Extended Reality (XR) is going to be mainstream, what would it require coming as popular as TV? There are all sorts of exciting things happening in XR field, and it’s interesting to dwell in the past times and in the possible future, trying to attach the strings.”
Read more about Imarre on their website!
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This post is a part of the article series about Helsinki XR Center’s hub teams. In this series, we will be posting team introductions on a weekly basis during the summer and fall of 2020. Now it’s your chance to get to know our talented XR community!
Follow our social media channels and website’s News-section to stay posted for new articles!
If you missed the earlier XR Hub team introductions, they are available in the News-section.
