Phygital: Bringing Digital to Life

There is a new buzzword forming on the lips of the trendsetters, the same people who brought you the social revolutions of Facebook and Twitter but also inflicted upon you things such as the instantly forgettable Flooz.com and the inspiringly underwhelming Google Wave. Nevertheless it is worth the time to explore this new word, née concept, and see if any substance lies within. The word is ‘phygital’ and idea behind it is the combining of the physical and digital. This relationship between physical and digital can be applied to various things. It can really be anything that combines the two, such as QR codes, augmented reality, or location based services. Phygital as a term has been cropping up for the last couple of years but has never really been taken much note of, it is only now that we’re seeing an increase and availability in the technology surrounding the idea, such as QR codes and augmented reality, that the term, or at least the concept, has the opportunity to become part of the mainstream.

It has been true for many years that some concepts and even products, especially within the technology industry, are ahead of their time and consequently suffer for it, for example the QUBE TV service and Sega Activator were both way ahead of their time but failed to make an impact and faded away only for the concepts behind them to resurface and take off years later. It would seem the same problem has been blighting both QR codes, augmented reality and location based services right up until the last year or so. The rapid progress of smartphone technology and their proliferation over the past twelve months has greatly expanded the audience with access to these services; and because a larger number of people have access to and are discovering them we are starting to see them pop up more and more.

Less than six months ago QR codes were by no means considered mainstream and rarely, if at all, seen on large mainstream media such as national TV. During July and August this year however, not only did QR codes make an appearance on TV but on the BBC at prime time in a programme called ‘The Good Cook’. The 2D barcodes were used throughout the episodes to provide links to recipes featured in the show to tech savvy viewers. I believe this could be a major landmark not only for QR codes but phygital technology as a whole; this level of exposure for a service which connects the digital to the physical can only help to accustom the general public to phygital services and lay the foundations for future ones.

Another example of phygital in action is augmented reality. Augmented reality is essentially layering digital information on top of the physical world through a camera, such as on a smartphone. Layar, which has been around for about two years, is one of the more popular augmented reality apps and essentially lets you engage virtual layers, such as pubs, tube stations or hotels, to what you are seeing on screen. This means you can see a virtual representation of where these things are in the physical world making it useful for locating the nearest one or for directions. Layar has recently taken its app a step further with Layar Vision which will add the ability for the app to be able to recognise real world objects and then display augmented reality experiences on top of them. The app works through recognising a unique visual fingerprint for each real world object that has been uploaded to the Layar servers. When the app then sees one of these fingerprints in the real world it automatically displays any media attached to it. This can be used in a number of ways, such as a trailer and link to cinema tickets displayed over a film poster, or for customer feedback displayed over the exit in say a restaurant. However, if all this is to sensible for you then there are games too! ARSoccer is basically a Keepie-Uppie game in which you try to keep the virtual football on your screen up by kicking your actual legs, there’s also ARDefender which is a tower defence game that takes place on your desk, floor or any other surface you have around.

If you’re looking for a game but augmented reality is not your thing then Foursquare offers a different sort of phygital game. Foursquare users use their mobile devices to interact with their environment by checking-in at venues close to where they are. Users then gain points or badges for checking-in at places on the most occasions or at certain times of the day, for example if you check-in to a venue once a day more than anyone else over a 60 day period then you become the mayor of that venue. On top of this users can have their check-ins posted to their Twitter and/or Facebook accounts for their friends (or Foursquare rivals) to see. The side effect of this of course is that businesses regularly visited and checked into by users get a nice, free stream of advertising which can be encouraged by offering vouchers when you check-in.

Whether the term phygital survives and goes on to embed itself in our everyday vocabulary or not the concept behind it looks set to. Much as globalisation has made the world smaller and brought people and businesses closer together, phygitalisation could well close the gap between the physical and digital worlds and potentially revolutionise the way society functions.