CoJMC student launches augmented reality app on Apple Store

Jared Brosius, Live, Love, Discover CEO, works to perfect the new FindIt! AR app in his office at the Nonprofit Hub. (Credit/Jordan Snader)
Jared Brosius, Live, Love, Discover CEO, works to perfect the new FindIt! AR app in his office at the Nonprofit Hub. (Credit/Jordan Snader)

by Jordan Snader, senior advertising and public relations major

Many students dream of accomplishing great things in their future careers. Jared Brosius couldn’t wait that long.

In September 2016, he started the content creation company Live, Love, Discover in an effort to realize his goal of uniting businesses and the people around them through technology.

Brosius, a senior advertising and public relations major, acts as the CEO of the company, partnering with his friend and COO of LLD, Mustafa Ridha, a senior computer engineering major at UNL. The two met while working together at Huskertech, and connected through of their shared passion for technology and creativity.

“I want us to be a powerhouse involved in innovation,” Ridha said. “We want to be big.”

To get there, the pair scrape together funds by freelancing their graphic and web design skills in order to focus on other projects they are more passionate about. Brosius dedicates around 60 hours of his week to LLD while attending UNL as a full-time student.

“I pretty much eat, sleep and breathe LLD,” Brosius said. “Even when I’m in classes I’m constantly gaining new connections and ideas that somehow translate to my work.”

One of those passionate projects is LLD’s new FindIt! AR app. The app launched in the Apple Store Sept. 26, and will release for Android in the near future.

The smartphone app uses augmented reality to digitally hide shapes around the user’s physical environment viewed on their phone screen. Players of the game must find these shapes before time expires.

Augmented reality is similar to virtual reality, but the two are not identical. While virtual reality immerses the user in another environment, augmented reality adds elements to the world around them, altering the user’s existing world on their phone screen.

“[Augmented reality] is a pretty new thing,” Brosius said. “FindIt! AR is actually one of the first apps to really use AR.”

The app will act as LLD’s introduction to the market, but Brosius believes augmented reality will take the company much farther than a simple entertainment app.

“Lots of people have a business ideas, but don’t really know where it will end up,” Brosius said. “I’m just the opposite. I know exactly where the company will be, but I’m not quite sure how we’re going to get there.”

Brosius’s vision for the future of LLD is largely centered on an initiative known as Project Unify. The project is in its early stages, so specific details are kept well under wraps. Project Unify will work to bring businesses and people together, allowing businesses to advertise to customers without aggravating them.

“I’m really excited for Unify,” Brosius said. “I don’t want to say a whole lot about it right now, but I do know that it’s going to be really awesome.”