Augmented reality graduation filters

Award-winning interactive brand experience for ASU grads

Augmented reality filter that adds falling branded confetti
Augmented reality filter that adds 2020 sunglasses onto the user
Augmented reality filter that adds a grad cap to the user and balloons that slowly fall from above

As Enterprise Senior Art Director responsible for the experience design of university graduation, I sprang into action in early 2020 as the world suddenly changed due to the pandemic. I quickly initiated a project to develop augmented reality (AR) filters to provide a meaningful, branded experience for grads. I spearheaded the brainstorming, development and execution of the project, gaining executive buy-in and collaborating with stakeholders across the university. This successful campaign provided a unique virtual experience for users as the world went into lockdown and it went on to win Gold in the ADDY Awards.

Highlights

Augmented reality
Design sprint
Rapid prototyping
User testing
Proactive leadership
Project management

Tools

Snapchat Lens Studio
Spark AR
Blender
Google Suite
Slack
Zoom

Part of my duties managing the enterprise brand of Arizona State University (ASU) included crafting the experience design of university commencement. In the past this included creating branded activations onsite for grads including physical and digital deliverables and updating physical art installations. The pandemic in early 2020 hit during the tail-end of Commencement planning. While university leadership were debating whether an in-person celebration would still happen, I jumped into planning ways in which my team could deliver an innovative and joyful virtual experience to the graduates. I initiated an experimental design sprint with my fully remote team to quickly brainstorm and develop augmented reality (AR) filters. Once I determined that we could deliver, the project was pitched to my executive team and they approved the project for implementation across the university.

Process

I pulled together a small team of 3 designers to quickly iterate and develop filters for Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook so grads could share their experience through the social platform of their choice. I hypothesized that if the in-person celebration was cancelled, grads would still want to share their accomplishment and school spirit even if they didn’t get to wear their actual robes and celebrate on-stage.

Because my team had little to no experience working in Lens Studio, Spark AR and Blender, I facilitated a quick onboarding, split up work between designers and shared tools and resources. I devised a collaborative process to quickly and closely prototype, test, and iterate on each filter:

  • Set milestones and check-ins, allowing each designer to work asynchronously with scheduled times for regrouping for updates and feedback to keep the project moving forward.

  • Created a dedicated Slack channel for project updates and collaboration.

  • Led design critiques and knowledge sharing through Slack and Zoom calls utilizing screenshare and annotation to ensure shared understanding of tools and feedback.
A series of photos showing the designer testing the graduation cap filter during stages of development

Testing

The work was highly collaborative and extremely fast-paced. I was able to develop working prototypes and user test my hypothesis with soon-to-be graduating students in less than a week and a half.

The concept and designs were shared with graduating students. The user feedback was overwhelmingly positive. Students appreciated the graduation cap filter, as many had not purchased robes due to the uncertainty of the event. The confetti and ball-drop effects, which reflect the penultimate moment of a typical live graduation experience, were highly praised as well.

With the knowledge that my team could both deliver high-quality filters and that graduating students were excited about these tools, I pitched the project to senior executive leadership where it was overwhelmingly approved.

Delivery

Once approved by the university executive team, it was time to finalize all the designs, prepare assets for launch and share deliverables across all marketing departments. I led the team and cross-university collaboration by:

  • Creating documentation to share university-wide including opportunities to collaborate with the enterprise team, guidelines for best practices and tools for creating the assets to help the huge creative community across the university ramp up its use of Augmented Reality (AR) software.

  • Creating a Lookbook of the filters for university partners to share and be inspired to create additional college branded assets which would need to be approved by my enterprise team for a consistent experience for users.

  • Aided units in creating and uploading assets to be published on our brand social account.

Results

The filters were a success, so much so that they were updated and implemented again for the 2021 celebrations.

  • Initiated and got the project through approvals, platform review and go-live within a very quick turnaround time of just a week and a half.

  • Delivered 6 unique AR experiences that grads could use through the social media platform of their choice — Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook — or via Zoom celebrations.
    • The full set of Snapchat filters captured 1.43m views, over 1.3m plays and over 19k shares.
    • As of November 2020, the top-performing Snapchat lens, ASU grad backdrops, had over 502k views, 472k plays and over 8k shares.
    • Another top-performing filter, ASU grad balloons, had a play time of over 4 days, likely due to the Zoom/Snap Lens integration which allowed grads to use the filter during video calls and digital celebrations.
    • The Instagram and Facebook filters garnered over 63k impressions, 26k opens, nearly 6k captures and over 450 shares.

  • The campaign won Gold in the 2021 ADDY Awards for Elements of Advertising (March 2021, American Advertising Awards, AAF Phoenix).

Collaborators

Omar Mota, Digital Designer; Alex Estrella, Digital Designer; Allison Perlis, UX-UI Design Principal; Monica Ballesteros, Senior Manager, Social Media; Lindsay Kinkade, Senior Director Brand Creative

R&D

Research and development is a huge part of my design and management process. I believe it's important to build in time for creative play, skill-building and experimentation. These projects not only help to inspire and recharge creatives — there are often takeaways, design elements or otherwise that inform future work.

This foam finger augmented reality (AR) filter was a project that I started when I had downtime and was brainstorming ways in which the alumni audience could feel more connected to their favorite alma mater sports teams living out-of-state (the Alumni Association has chapters of dedicated sports fans across the world!) and those in-state who could only experience sporting events virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic. I shared the filter prototype with senior leadership and it was quickly implemented as a real project. The filter was updated slightly and pushed live via the official ASU Snapchat account.

snapcode-ASU-Gameday

The final lens can be viewed here.

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© Hanna Norris 2023