 Oh, sweet, check out my chickens! Hey, chicken, how's it going, man? Oh god, what have I done? So, yeah, this is actually really stable. All right, chicken. Hey, in this video, I'm going to talk to you about future-proofing your design career by learning how to design for the next technology platform, Augmented Reality. It's one of the best ways to future-proof your career as a designer and increased demand as a designer is to do things that other people are not really learning yet, but that companies are looking for. Right now, I can tell you that over the next few years, a lot of companies are going to be looking for designers who can design for augmented reality interfaces. You know, you don't have to believe it, you don't have to trust it, but I think it's going to be massive, and I hope you stick around to hear what I have to say, and I also want to hear what you have to say in the comments. I have to plant something here. Oh, yeah, I don't have a... Oh, oh, plant. Let's put this here as well. What I just showed you there is a look at an AR game. This AR game is called Minecraft Earth, and it's something that it's still not super popular yet. You know, a lot of people will remember Pokemon Go. A lot of people will know of some AR products, but right now in 2020, AR is still one of those things which is just for gimmicks, right? It's just for, okay, we've got these cute little ideas, like, you know, Minecraft, and I think it's really well done, and I think Minecraft Earth will be pretty big when Microsoft really pushes it, but that's not really what I'm interested. What I'm interested in as a designer, as someone who runs a design agency, is where is AR going, and is it something that I should bother investing in, learning, right? Is this something that me and my team here at AJ & Smart does something we need to focus on? Well, in my opinion, over the next five to ten years, and I know that's a long time scale, but I think we're going to see it in the next five years, AR is going to be huge, and when I talk about AR, I'm talking, and it's really annoying because I can't find the headset that I was looking for. We have a, maybe you can, I made a video a while ago, I think it was three years ago, with me showing the possibilities of the Microsoft HoloLens, and for me back then, I was interested in this idea of, okay, having a digital workspace, having an overlay of what you're, on top of what you're doing, is more interesting to me than what you can get with VR. Now, it's 2020, it's actually April 2020, the entire world is on lockdown, everyone's using Zoom, and right, and at this moment, Apple and Facebook are both working on next generation, mixed reality, or AR headsets. You know, we already have, right now on the market, we have Microsoft HoloLens 2, and we have the Magic Leap, those are the two main products out in the market today, but they're still in the fringes, they're still not something people are talking about, they're still very focused on enterprise, but I think over the next five years, when a company like Apple, and when a company like Facebook, really pushes into this market, we're going to start seeing a lot more applications for AR. First, I think the first real thing that we're going to be focusing on is really like this idea of presence, the idea that you can put on the headset and have the feeling that someone else is in the room with you. Right now, I think people are realizing this is something super important. Imagine if I bought or rented 30 headsets for the company that I'm supposed to fly to, and I stood in like a bit of a studio like this, and I could give a workshop, and I can give a talk without having to fly, but the people wearing the headset had the feeling I was in the room with them. I think we're going to move to that point. And what does that mean for you as a designer? Well, for you as a designer, I think there's going to be, and there already is the start of it now, with companies like Facebook and Apple looking for these designers. There's going to be massive demand for people who can design interfaces and come up with interfaces and design graphical overlays and GUIs for AR products. And I think this is something that a lot of designers are ignoring right now, because we're so stuck to, well, everything is on the phone, and that makes sense because that's the most popular product right now. I'm not saying the phone is going to get less popular, but I am saying that right now might be an interesting time to learn how to design for augmented reality products. And there's a lot of kits out there. There's ARKit. Google has its own kit as well. It's called ARCore. And really now is an interesting time to maybe try to get yourself a secondhand HoloLens or something cheap and try to design your own overlays. And honestly, with ARKit on the phone, you can test that out really, really easily without having to buy anything new. And really adding this to your portfolio, I think is going to be massive, bringing yourself out there as an authority. Right now, it's not that easy to find great AR design tutorials on YouTube, right? That's a sign for me that we're missing something. And it's definitely something we're going to be making at AJ & Smart. This video is not like, here's exactly how you do it. This video is just to say, I think there's going to be a massive demand for designers designing interfaces for augmented reality overlay devices or mixed reality overlay devices, whatever they're going to be called. I'm not saying that in five years, everyone's going to be walking around with glasses that do great overlays. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying for the enterprise world, maybe even for concerts, a lot of different applications are going to become a lot more possible and a lot cheaper when companies like Apple and Facebook push these headsets and this feeling of presence that they've been trying to do with VR. But VR is too bulky and too claustrophobic and has a lot of issues with motion sickness. I think that AR is something that a lot of designers are ignoring. They feel like maybe it's like a gimmick that's not going to come back. But I think, and I want to also state here that I think AR is going to be absolutely massive over the next five years and there's just going to be huge opportunity. So how can you start learning? Honestly, the easiest thing to do is start Googling it, right? So Google how to design AR assets, start learning it, start trying it out with your phone, pointing to my phone, by the way. You know, you're going to have to learn new things. You're going to have to learn Unity. You might have to learn 3D modeling programs. But I think that's really interesting, right? Having that skill is going to help future-proof your career for the next few years. When maybe, especially in an economy like right now, when maybe there's not as much demand for a general UX designer, but I think there's a lot. And I don't think I've been searching around for it. There is going to be a lot of demand for people who are able to create great user experiences for augmented reality headsets. With this video, there's nothing much for me to say besides, I think that's coming up. Let me know in the comments what you think. I'm really bullish on it. I really believe it's going to happen over the next five years. But even in the next three, two to three years, people are going to be really interested in finding designers for that topic. So let me know what you think. Let me know what the best resources are for learning AR design. Thanks for watching. Do hit the like button if you enjoyed it. Subscribe and hit the bell. I'm going to go back to playing Minecraft, I think. Peace. Okay. Okay. I think AR, okay. This thing, now I have to do a... I have to go to the... Okay, Callum, are we going to make this video? Over the next five minutes, I'm going to give you an overview of what I think. If you don't have time, that's no problem. But if you do have time, this is going to change your life. Right now, I can't remember the name and I'm too lazy to look it up. I'm supposed to have my laptop, Callum wanted me to show stuff, but I really wasn't in the mood.