Exploring Augmented Reality Using Snapchat’s Lens Studio

Name: Gunjan Joshi
Major: Computer Science
Minor: Economics
Advisors: Dr. Drew Guarnera and Dr. Thomas Montelione

Augmented reality is a technology that uses visual elements, sounds, hardware like cameras, and displays to enhance and make changes to a person’s physical world when a device like a smartphone is used. This project explores the field of augmented reality and how it can be used in the tourism industry to enhance people’s experience in this field. To facilitate this exploration, an interactive augmented reality application is built using Snapchat’s Lens Studio, which is released on Snapchat for anyone to use. Lens Studio uses JavaScript, which allows developers to write scripts for their AR applications so that users have an interactive experience. The application in this work enables users to explore various touristic destinations in Nepal and interact with multiple components present in these destinations to experience their religious and cultural significance. The expensive and time-consuming nature of traveling to a new destination is the motivation behind developing this experience. Moreover, traveling has become increasingly difficult after the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020. This project aims to create a remote travel application for remote tourism using augmented reality technology and present augmented reality from a hardware, software, and visual design perspective. The product of this project is a remote tourism AR application created using Lens Studio, distributed via Snapchat.

Posted in Comments Enabled, Independent Study, Symposium 2022 on April 26, 2022.

2 responses to “Exploring Augmented Reality Using Snapchat’s Lens Studio”

Brooke Krause says:

April 29, 2022 at 8:10 am

Thanks for stopping by the office a few weeks ago to share your IS with me! It is such a great app and amazing to feel like you really are in Nepal!
Jillian Morrison says:

April 29, 2022 at 1:04 pm

Gunjan, Great work! I have never been to Nepal, but now I can use your app to pretend that I went to Nepal! Is your app available to the public? If it is, What is it called?