ROYAL OAK – Rachele Downs, Vice President of Entrepreneurial Strategies at Inform, interviews Christina York, CEO of ALTality, who developed the proof of concept for her augmented reality company in November 2014 at a Detroit Startup Weekend. She won first place, gaining her entry to the global competition, where ALTality was named one of the top five startups, winning a free booth at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2015. If you’re heard of Pokemon Go, the consumer app that took the world by storm in July with millions of downloads, you understand ALTality’s business concept.
ALTality’s first product is an augmented reality book called Spellbound that has been beta tested at C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital in Ann Arbor to distract children during painful and scary procedures. Now Spellbound is going commercial to work with other hospitals.
York said augmented reality has a tremendous upside potential, illustrated by the phenomenon success of Pokemon Go. This application’s success also has made York’s life easier because now she doesn’t have to spend 20 minutes explaining how the technology works, she said.
If you’d like to learn more about ALTality and Spellbound, you’re going to want to listen to this podcast: https://soundcloud.com/podcastdetroit/m2techcast-46-inforum-rachel-downs
