For a lot of non-Japanese people, working from home was not that much of a shock. It was not ideal with the entire family all stuck at home whilst working, but it was something we had all done comfortably before and could manage.

However, for many Japanese people, it was genuinely disruptive at both a professional and personal level. With people here culturally tuned to work as a team and work colleagues representing almost a second family, not having the organization and its people be part of everyday lives was more deeply disruptive than perhaps any other country.

Augmented Agency provides Augmented Reality (AR) solutions for businesses, which essentially means making digital a part of our real environment. We effectively combine the digital and the real world through the use of your phone camera, which feels much closer to the real thing.

For our business, since the COVID-19 pandemic began, we had many enquiries about AR for things like virtual showrooms, so people can feel like they have walked into the showroom while still being in their own home.

Our research team has also developed a prototype that can allow anyone using any camera device to be able to capture themselves live, convert themselves into an AR experience and deliver themselves to their friends’ environments to chat live as if they are in front of that person.

Augmented Agency is a proud partner of Metropolis and has helped embed simple AR experiences throughout this magazine for your enjoyment. We hope you have some fun with it.

Jason Buckley
President & CEO
Augmented Agency
augmented-agency.com