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Using Augmented Reality for the Giving Tower
Jan 28 2016 10:09:53 , 1221

Ryan Fugler 


They say that giving is contagious. A gift from the heart, a good deed done, a warm gesture of appreciation—these things tend to multiply as quickly as they start. They build—like stories of a building—forming a solid structure of good will and intentions. It’s not always easy to observe how these acts of generosity can add up. Oftentimes we aren’t quite sure if our humble donations will make much of a difference. Well, as the saying goes, seeing is believing. 


Picture this: A day dedicated to assistance and contributions to those in need. A time to curb our own wants while we focus on others. That is the premise of “Giving Tuesday,” a name assigned to the Tuesday that follows Thanksgiving each year. It’s a date that allows organizations, charities, and common individuals to rally around particular causes; bringing hope and resources to the less fortunate. On Dec. 2, 2014, CrowdRise—with the help of ER2 Image Group—became the center of these efforts.

 

Going Big

CrowdRise is a fundraising company that uses crowdsourcing to raise charitable donations for a number of charitable organizations.

“We had enough people come to us before last year’s Giving Tuesday asking what we were going to do that we decided we wanted to do something as a company,” says Gary Wohlfeill, director of marketing at CrowdRise. “And we wanted to go big with it.”


Going big included strategic planning, a careful selection of partners, and the inclusion of a software-and-signage combination that was never before seen. It resulted in the CrowdRise Giving Tower campaign, an ever-rising, three-dimensional augmented reality “tower” that was built solely upon donors’ technologically-devised “bricks” as their contributions increased.


“We had about 600 non-profits involved,” Wohlfeill explains the campaign, which raised over $2 million. Powered by a specific CrowdRise application, free to download, “once you make a donation you get a virtual brick in the tower and if you connect it to Facebook, the bricks display your page for the world to see.”


Connected, visible and innovative, the Giving Tower provided a fun and user-friendly way to contribute.

“The idea was getting people this tangible measurement of the whole impact of Giving Tuesday,” says Wohlfeill. “So the more donations, the taller the tower grew in this hologram, virtual reality.”

 

The Missing Piece

The Giving Tower project entailed building and installing three towers: two outdoor towers (at One Worldwide Plaza in NYC, and at The National Mall in Washington D.C.), and one indoor tower (at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston).


The concept combined CrowdRise’s cutting-edge augmented reality application—the CrowdRise Giving Tower app (www.crowdrise.com/giving-tower/app)—and the app’s marker, which in this case is a large fabric surface that is affixed with marker graphics starting just above the base of the physical tower.

 

The intelligence of the application would allow a handheld device such as an iPad or smartphone to recognize the marker graphics—much like an encoded, scan-ready data point—and build the virtual “bricks” from the printed design. At that point, using their handheld device, users could “see” the 3D hologram extend upward from the physical base of the tower.


CrowdRise, a leader in fundraising initiatives for more than 1.5 million charities, is no stranger to these large-scale promotions. The company is the official partnering platform for high-profile events like the Boston Marathon and the New York Marathon. From a creative standpoint, Wohlfeill himself has a background in development, so the Giving Tower project had many of the critical elements in place from the beginning. What the campaign lacked; however, was the physical structure—or marker—which would bring the application and giving experience to life.

 

The Right Partner

“We knew we needed help, not only with the printing but with the fabrication and design of the marker, because we were going to have to ship these things,” says Wohlfeill. “They’d have to be assembled quickly and torn down quickly.”

So CrowdRise took steps to find a project partner. From the Chicago area, Wohlfeill started his initial exploration for a print shop, calling some familiar businesses first.


“While most shops could do the printing,” Wohlfeill explained, “no one I called had any experience with the fabrication.”

Fortunately, two of the shops he had contacted referred him to Bloomingdale, Illinois-based ER2 Image Group, an experienced company excelling in large-format printing and architectural signage. Wohlfeill engaged with them, remembering that “it all happened very quickly.”

From ER2’s perspective, the project sounded unique and interesting.


“When Gary first called, he proposed that he had some renderings of this large tower,” recalls Nick Fracasso, an account executive for ER2. “And he didn’t know how exactly he was going to accomplish it. But we had been referred as being a company that can think outside the box and help with a project of this scale, magnitude, and quite honestly, to brainstorm the concept.”


Wohlfeill had a few ideas regarding the marker that he had been contemplating on the front end, though none of them seemed to fit with the platform like he had wanted. He imagined the structure being constructed from wood, or possibly having an entirely inflatable platform. Problems arose—for example, the National Mall does not allow secure objects to be sunk into the ground; so stability ties and hammered stakes were ruled out.


“When he first proposed it and showed us the renderings, we realized we’d never done anything like this before,” Fracasso says. “So it was just very much a learning curve for both of us. Him educating me on his processes and what exactly needs to be done, as well as me trying to figure out what capabilities we had here to actually make it happen.”

 

Fabrication

Considering every element, the team at ER2 suggested an extruded aluminum structure that ultimately climbed above all other options as the right solution. Its weight allowed it to stand freely and remain stable without being anchored into the ground. The reusable aluminum structures can hold the printed graphics and can also be dismantled for easier shipping.


The printing process fell in line flawlessly as well. The way the printed materials were created, they could be snapped into the frame and changed on-the-fly if necessary. With the other less adaptable structural options, that simply wasn’t possible—an entirely new structure would have to be purchased to replace a set of graphics.


“Here, all we have to do is have the panels reprinted and the structure stays the same,” Wohlfeill says.

This functional advantage was critical in choosing the structure, especially given the enormity of the project. Both square-shaped outdoor towers located in New York and D.C. needed to accommodate graphics that were 25’ high and 5’ x 5’ wide on four sides. Along with the size specifications, print accuracy played a large role. The operability of the accompanying application program depended upon the precision of the printed graphics.

“The graphic itself had to appear seamless so that the app didn’t lose any of the marker and then not work properly,” Fracasso says. “So along with print quality, we had to make sure the tower-like marker had graphics on all four sides and was seamless all the way around.”


ER2 accomplished these objectives through skill, experience, and reliable shop equipment. Using its d-gen Teleios dye-sublimation printer to output the graphics on Revolution glare-control fabric, ER2 finished the job on time and without complications.


Fracasso gives a tremendous amount of credit to ER2’s staff for making the base of this massive undertaking possible. He says that every element had to work together to make sure that the actual tower could withstand the outdoor elements and the graphics were held securely in place.


“We have more than 50 people here, and I’d say most of them were involved,” Fracasso says about his team. “We have designers, print operators, project managers, and our own guys who actually fabricate the structure itself. We cut the extrusions, assemble them and design the structure, all in-house.”


Having all of the resources in-house helped ER2 manage the tight timeline associated with the project. Fracasso says they began the job in early November and needed to complete it, obviously, before Giving Tuesday arrived.

“The actual towers were completed within a week and a half,” says Fracasso. “And then we had to ship them out.”


Because campaign sponsors wouldn’t come aboard until something tangible could be viewed, a 10’ tall prototype was also developed, along with a video explaining the concept in mid-November. Fortunately, every element operated smoothly as planned, and the project sailed into the holiday season.


“We were pretty much working right up until Thanksgiving time,” Fracasso says. “It was right at the last third and fourth week in November.”

 

Installation and Implementation

With the physical pieces in place, the real genius of the project was allowed to take shape. Using the largest augmented-reality markers that anyone involved in this project had ever witnessed, the Giving Tower experience not only tracked how many donations were made but how tall the tower was rising on a continual basis.


“The reason the markers were so big was so that when you were standing in front of one of them and you pointed the app at it with your smartphone, the marker was relative to the size of the experience,” Wohlfeill describes. “So when we calculated 25 feet for the marker, that was a really good height so that I could tilt up my smartphone and continue to ‘see’ this tower going all the way up into the clouds.”


As for how the application works in relation with the marker, Fracasso compares it most closely to a QR code, except it is completely in a league of its own when moving away from two-dimensional objects.


“This technology does exist, it’s mainly done with a sticker on the floor or a wall, but CrowdRise wanted something more 3D because the app can render 3D objects,” Fracasso says. “But actually making a marker that is 3D, I’ve looked it up quite a bit, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”

In tandem with the app, progress was also recorded on the website at www.givingtower.com. For those donors who couldn’t visit the physical towers in New York, Washington and Houston, an alternative method was created to help donors engage with the app.


“You could put a dollar bill anywhere, point the app at it, and out of the dollar bill the tower would appear to grow right before your eyes,” Wohlfeill describes. Programmers who wrote the app also named the dollar bill image as a marker for the CrowdRise app.

CrowdRise even ran a contest that encouraged donors to erect the tower in the most original place—using a dollar bill. One individual grew the tower from atop his dog’s head.


“Our goal was to create something that got the PR that it did.”

Through the eyes of the virtual reality world, the Giving Tower’s elevation surpassed many of the physical buildings along any cityscape.

“We wanted to see how many buildings we could overtake in height on Giving Tuesday,” says Wohlfeill.


And it overtook almost every one of them. All told, the virtual tower ascended more than 2,500 feet—that’s only a couple hundred feet shorter than the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

 

One of a Kind Endeavor

To say this endeavor is one-of-a-kind would be an accurate assessment. Fracasso believes that this type of technology, as it is incorporated with a sign project, is something that “does take an app that is pretty specific for it. Only this app is made to download and recognize the Giving Tower through the viewing of a device.”


Can it be included in a future Giving Tuesday campaign? For CrowdRise, the toughest questions have already been answered, now it’s just a matter of asking one additional qualifier. Was the effort worth the return? Wohlfeill confirms that without hesitation.


“We saw so many of the charities leverage it for their campaign,” he says with excitement. “And it was highly engaging for the donors.”

  • Giving Tower
  • Dollar bill tower
  • Fabrication