AR GrabGifts

Background - H2 2021

In 2021, our team competed in a hackathon and secured 2nd place. Following our success, we launched our concept as an evergreen product. To date, we have released three different AR cards: LNY '22, X'mas '22, and LNY '23.

Role + Process

We actually won the competition without finishing the product. But we all wanted so badly to finish it that we wiggled it into our roadmap in H2 2021! With the pressure of the 3-day deadline lifted, we had the opportunity to scale and standardize our product. This has enabled the process to be managed by Product Ops and our contracted illustrator with minimal engineering support.

The flow was relatively straightforward. Everything else, on the other hand, was unknown. We didn’t know which file format to deliver; we didn’t even know what was possible and what wasn’t. We truly were in the dark, but thank God the engineers were excited about this project. While working with the product team, I also worked closely with a team of illustrators and a 3D contractor to deliver the 3D animated AR asset.

Result

We became the first B2C-facing AR products at Grab! But we also made a lot of mistakes for our first AR for the Year of the Tiger. The original plan is to make two assets, one of a dancing tiger and the other of an LNY banner with food. The tiger turned out beautifully but we decided to not roll out the LNY banner with food. Unfortunately, when the asset was uploaded and we tested it internally, the asset turned out to look a lot like an altar when placed in the real world lol. But hey, we never made the same mistake again.