Augmented reality cards offer high tech personalized greetings

These messages offer a new and unique way to share well wishes using smartphone technology.

Although most people do enjoy having an important occasion remembered through the use of a greeting card, augmented reality is starting to change the playing field a little bit in an industry that has not evolved very much in quite a long time.

Greeting cards are nice and often enjoyable, but their traditional form limits their interactivity.

A company called Artiphany has decided to change that through the use of augmented reality and funding through Kickstarter. It is working to use AR technology to be able to give people the opportunity to send a paper greeting card as they usually will, but to expand its interactive and personalized capabilities so that they can play customizable 3D video messages.

This augmented reality project is also known as Gizmo greeting cards.

The project features Gizmo the robot, who uses augmented reality technology to appear in front of the card’s recipient in order to wish them a happy birthday, a happy holiday, or wish them a speedy recovery, through the use of smartphone technology.

These greeting cards are sold with a selection of different stickers. Once the code on those stickers has been scanned, Gizmo appears through augmented reality and delivers the message on behalf of the sender. As is the case with other AR based features, Gizmo requires the recipient of the card to have a smartphone or tablet, as well as the corresponding app that will allow the animation to play. In this case, it is a third party app called DAQRI that is needed to scan the codes and play the personalized animations.

Artiphany is currently working on gaining enough investors to be able to fund their final round of augmented reality animations, as well as to begin producing T-shirts, 3d models of Gizmo, and the customizeable cards to be sent to its backers.

While greeting cards are an old style and they have not changed much other than attempts such as this new augmented reality project, the industry is still worth up to $8 billion per year. Artiphany is clearly seeing this as an opportunity to carve their own niche in a lucrative market by standing out and providing consumers with something new and interesting.