Eight billion uses of augmented reality happen on Snapchat every day. Salesforce uses AR to onboard new staff. In this episode, Thinking on Paper looks at what those two realities say about augmented reality in 2026.
Michael Guerin, CEO of Imvizar, starts in the post–Pokémon Go era. Snapchat delivers AR at massive scale, yet most users never label it as augmented reality.
If you use Instagram or Snapchat, you already use AR through lenses and filters. The technology works because it sits inside existing behaviour rather than announcing itself.
Salesforce reaches the same outcome through a different route. Guerin explains how AR replaces slide-heavy onboarding with a shared, QR-led experience. New hires move through the building, absorb the culture in context, and retain more than they would from another presentation.
This approach rests on what Guerin calls spatial storytelling.
AR now shows up in brand activations, tourist sites, museums, and sporting events, but quality depends on process.
Guerin starts with the site, then designs user movement. He places visuals, plans interaction, and writes narrative last. AR fails when it behaves like static video. It succeeds when movement and place carry the experience.
Imvizar sees its strongest results in museums and tourism. Guerin describes work at Spike Island, a former Irish prison, where AR places visitors inside scenes from the site’s past and draws emotional response directly from the space.
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Mark and Jeremy
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TIMESTAMPS
(00:00) The Story of Augmented Reality
(03:46) Snapchat & AR Post-Pokemon Go
(06:24) Snoop Dogg In A Wine Bottle
(08:12) Salesforce AR
(13:13) What Is Digital Storytelling?
(17:07) AR In Tourism
(18:25) Designing The Spike Island AR Experience
(22:49) How To Do AR Well
(26:26) Meta, AI And AR Glasses
(29:40) Privacy
(32:33) Mark's Terrible Thought Experiment
(33:58) What do we want humans to be?