Breaking Drupal out of the box with AR and beacons

Drupal’s flexibility in content modeling creates almost limitless possibilities for bringing together the world of data and the real world.

Augmented reality (AR) allows digital content to be overlaid on top of the environment with which the user is interacting. It visually keys off of objects the user is interacting with, allowing the user experience to be enriched with this information. Museums and brick-and-mortar stores are increasingly employing augmented reality to superimpose content over users' perspectives rather than boxing that content into the isolated environment of a web page.

Meanwhile, beacons provide the ability to granularly locate a user within an environment, so that content that is most relevant to them can be presented. Beacon manufacturers are capitalizing on the increased interest from the standpoint of commerce by offering compelling APIs and easy-to-use hardware with features like near-field communication.

We’ll discuss ways in which these technologies can be combined, on top of Drupal, to create an immersive and interactive user experience.

Here are the topics that we'll dive into:

• Moving from a page-driven mentality to a geospatial mentality

• Why combine augmented reality (AR) and beacons?

• How can I provide AR-driven content using Drupal?

• What are the implications of AR on content management (cf. Layar)?

• How can I connect beacons to Drupal in a compelling way?

• What does an AR- and beacon-driven experience, tied together with Drupal, look like?

• Epilogue: Contextualizing content in a decontextualized world