The Washington Post enhances in-app augmented reality experience

The Washington Post today announced the launch of its first embedded augmented reality story. The Post built an industry-first embed code that lets users trigger an augmented reality experience with 3D visuals and audio narration.

“We were excited to be the first news publisher to support augmented reality in a news application, but for our second iteration in our iconic building series we needed to make augmented reality even simpler,” said Jeremy Gilbert, director of strategic initiatives at The Post. “We’ve been working to reduce the friction to make augmented reality as easily accessible as a photo gallery or a video—those are played inline and augmented reality should be too.”

The first story to implement this new feature looks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. one year after its grand opening. This is the latest installment of an augmented reality series about iconic buildings led by The Post’s Pulitzer Prize winning art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott. Users can walk through the architectural problems faced during the construction of the museum and the solutions made to overcome them. When triggered, the AR element starts at the site of the museum, looking at how the placement on the National Mall required the building to be placed partially underground. Audio narration navigates readers through each step of the construction process. The experience ends at the construction of the corona and details the difficulty in creating the building’s defining structure.

The feature is available on The Post’s classic app on iOS devices. Download the Post app here.

The Post is planning to insert augmented reality experiences in additional stories in 2018. The iconic buildings series is sponsored by Audi.