Digital retail experiencesOpportunities and Trends, Glimpses of Current Scenario

Methodology

Research. Introduction. Studying Current Formats. Field Study - Malls, Hypermarkets, E commerce and other. Discussing with Experts from the Industry. Customer Study. Case Study of Experiential Stores, Malls and more. Documenting . Findings and Identifying Opportunity Areas

Concept. Exploring Ideas through sketches and video examples. Retouching Ideas, Improvisation. Selection of Final Design / Idea

Prototyping. Sourcing Materials and other equipments. Implementation of the Prototype. Building final Prototype. Testing. Refining

Documentation. Research. Process. Conclusion

Context

Let’s think less about real estate, staff, footfall and online stores and start thinking about the entire world as a store; one in which we can easily make instant purchases regardless of time andplace. Driven by technology, the web, community and the search for ever-richer experiences, the world of shopping is undergoing a sweeping transformation.

Beyond an evolving the decentralized shopping experience,retailers must begin to contemplate the impact of digital media and the effects it is having on purchase decisions. Connected devices, whether a mobile phone or a web-enabled in-store kiosk, are making what was once a solitary trip to the store a socially connected event. As shoppers go through the process of discovering new products, testing them, and reflecting on their purchases, they are sharing these thoughts with their social networks and influencing perception amongst their peer group. Retailers must embrace and facilitate this sharing of information, and retail outlets need to evolve to create experiences that drivesales both in-store and within online social networks. Meanwhile, the traditional physical store remains as important as ever, providing the environment in which a retailer can providean unparalleled experience. Through the dynamic use of space, the most successful store owners are pushing the boundaries of storytelling, product testing and education - aspects of evolvedservices that lead to loyalty and repeat sales.

Digital retail experienceIntegrating the physical world with digital technology (and vice-versa) is one of the most interesting and opportunity rich territories of our age, and where a lot of the most important work in our industry will be done over the coming years.

Brands are integrating digital to enhance and augment the retail experience throughout the customer journey

tHE iNTERNATIONAL PICTURE

1. Drawing the customer in: engaging shop windows2. Ambient in-store interaction, engagement, entertainment3. Providing a richer product experience through RFID, shotcodes and augmented reality4. Digitally supported sales consultation and advice5. The evolution of the fitting room: augmented reality browsing and customization6. Facilitating social shopping: getting a second opinion in real-time7. Before you leave: digitally-enabled value adds8. Leaving a great experience and a recall value.

how does digital media help retail

1. Engaging shop windows

The digital retail experience starts before customers have even entered the store. Here’s a range of examples illustrating how shop windows are increasingly reactive, interactive, and even commerce enabled.

Levi’s interactive windowsIn this example from 1998, passers-by could interact with sensors on the glass to control the content displayed on plasma screens inside the windows of the flagship Regent Street store in London, 24 hours a day.

Elle MacPherson went with a simple but eye-catching

digital installation, using the movement of people walking by or standing in front of the windows to reveal the video

display.

Elle MacPherson Intimates

interactive window

At their Trinity Street store in Dublin, Tommy Hilfiger offered window shoppers the opportunity to capture and stylize an image to submit to a collage being streamed in-store, as well as projected onto a series of high-profile buildings in Dublin.

In a nice commercial twist, at the end of the campaign, participants could return to the store to pick up a T-shirt printed with their custom design.

Tommy Hilfiger Collage

Esprit borrowed from Disney mythology to create their “Mirror Mirror” installation, where a fairy godmother calls out to passerbys to brush away some snow from a mirror. The magic mirror then takes a photo of the shopper which is superimposed onto a virtual mannequin.

From there the product experience begins, with the now hooked-in shopper able to apply various outfits to their virtual self, including professionally designed haircuts and 50 items from Esprit’s current range.

The styling process results in a “model card” which is projected in-store, allowing the shopper to find and purchase the items they’ve selected. The model card could also be accessed from a mobile site using a custom QR code displayed in the shop window, and from there shared on to the Esprit Facebook page.

Esprit Mirror Mirror

Fashion brand Hugo Boss also went the augmented reality route for its Black Magic

interactive window.

A promotion in London dailies the Stylist and Shortlist drove customers to the Hugo Boss

store at Sloane Square, where customers could activate a fashion show in the window

with their flyer, and then take it in store to try their luck at a game of virtual blackjack for

the chance to win shopping vouchers.

Gimmicky yes, but it fulfilled their goal of garnering attention and driving footfall.

Hugo Boss augmented reality window

2. Ambient in-store interaction, engagement, entertainment

Once you’ve been hooked into the store, digital installations will engage, immerse and entertain you, enticing you to stay and shop.

Use of applications to automatically add to cart through use of bar codes detector. No need to stand in long queus for billing. Shopper can also see ads, reviews and more information regarding the product through the smart phone. User can also bill the product. Cashless transaction.

Stripey Lines

It's a 7-foot-6-inch LCD display with holographic glass that features a plethora of interactive options, allowing shoppers to browse merchandise, read customer reviews, submit their own feedback on products, discover promotions, and share finds with their friends via social and mobile integration.

Intel's holographic glass display

Square is a new mobile payment system for the iPhone and iPad that enablespeople to check out from anywhere. A small, plastic card reader fits into the headphone jack, transferring the credit card’s swipe data to the app or details can be entered manually without the need to swipe. After an employee enters the amount to charge, the customer confirms by simply entering their signature with their finger and then the receipt is sent to the customer’s email address.

www .squareup.com

App Transforms iPhone and iPad Into Credit Car d Machine

3. Providing a richer product experience

Once you’re shopping, digital technology including shotcode, RFID tagged product and reader displays, and augmented reality are able to provide a wealth of detail around the product you’re interested in, from related products, to reviews, to promotions.

One of the earliest examples of augmented reality was Lego’s in-store

kiosk. The idea is simple — hold up the box to the kiosk, and you can see what the

assembled product will look like.

Lego kiosk

4. Digitally supported sales consultation and advice

The shop assistant can use digital technologies as well to help you evaluate and compare your choices.

At Diesel’s store in Ginza, an interactive mirror was designed to enhance the communication between the sales assistant and the shopper. A digital camera can snap photos of up to six outfits, allowing the shopper and salesperson to compare them against each other.

Diesel Ginza Interactive Mirror

5. The evolution of the fitting room

Once you’ve got some items picked out, augmented reality fitting rooms enable rapid browsing and colour selection.

The idea is an evolution of a virtual-shoe fitting mirror released back in 2007 at the Adidas Paris flagship store, which allowed shoppers to virtually try on different footwear.

Adidas augmented reality Shoe shopping

Back in 2008 researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications presented a “virtual mirror” that would allow consumers to do just that via a touchscreen interface on the mirror, which may be more practical than the phone. However you can see that the issue of drapery was still obviously not being addressed at this point, which is where Adidas was looking to innovate a bit further.

Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications

6. Facilitating social shopping : getting a second opinion in real-timeOnce you’ve got your items picked out, share them virtually with your friends or significant others to get their second opinions.

Diesel stores in Spain now come equipped with Diesel Cam, which enables shoppers to photograph themselves with clothes they are trying on and immediately post the photo via Facebook Connect to get feedback from friends, or simply show off.

Diesel Cam

Nedap Retail has developed “Tweet Mirror”, another social media enabled

digital mirror recently installed at Swiss retailer Manor.

The mirror allows you to capture pics of various outfits, compare and share with

friends via Twitter, e-mail or mobile for a second opinion.

Manor Tweet Mirror

Innovation group Frog Design has envisioned a concept scenario called ThingBook, in which a future where every object is connected to the internet plays a critical role in how we might eventually shop for products. With every visible thing connected as a data point, users will be able to instantly research information about items such as clothes they see others wearing in the streets using image recognition systems on their mobile devices and pay for them through mobile systems. This access will enable people to shop and buy from anywhere.

www .frogdesign.com

Entire World As Display

Emerging Slowly.... Few of them can be seen in experience shops like titan. A lot of digital possibilities are restricted to display sign-age and information only because of cost factors and others.

The Indian Retail picture..

Digital signage in the broad sense has been in use for decades in the form of LED ticker signs and LED video wallsits recent growth it has yet to become a major public medium, due in part to the following negative factors,

Lack of interoperability Complex value chain Lack of understanding Understanding the industry

Digital signage

Titan Industries Ltd. launched India’s first watch experience zone to mark the 25th anniversary of the Company’s birth. This unique centre, called the Titan Experience Zone (TEZ), takes consumers through a delightful and interactive voyage in the world of watches. Crafted with the latest video, audio and sensory technology by Titan Global Design, in collaboration with Experiential Design Lab, an Indo-Italian design firm, this experience zone is yet another pioneering offering from Titan.

Titan Experience Zone (TEZ)

Kreate is a touchscreen based kiosk which allows shoppers to customise elements and create thier own unique code for the seletec design whic is used by Reebok to manufacture and deliver the shoe at your doorstep

Project by Codesign

reebok

The History Wall at the Rivet Store in Bangalore is a visual and virtual walk through a hundred fifty years of levis heritage and world History.A seamless narrative was created that engages the user with the brand's travelouge through time. A smart thouch screen, combined with customised electronics, slides along the length of the history wall and detects the decades mapped on the wall to reveal detail informtion for the corresponding decade. The visual interface mimics the spontaneous abung=dance of Levi's fanatic's scrapbook.

lEVI Strauss & Co. Wall of Fame

This 2,700 square feet experiential space is completely dedicated to the experience of Colour and home decor, and does not engage in retail/sale.The Asian Paints Colour Store, Delhi invites shoppers to personalise the potential of colour for their homes.The experience begins with a large cloud chandelier at the reception, which reacts to visitors with a colourful 'cloudburst' when they step on floor-pads of various colours.And other digitally enabled activities enchance the experience of the placeDone by - www. experientialdesignlab.com

ASIAN PAINTS COLOUR STORE

Xylys is a premium brand of watches by titan. To distinguish the exclusive Xylys showrooms, a unique shopping experience and an interactive exhibit on time was designed and executed in Bangalore, Hyderabad and mumbai.The river of time is an interactive installation celebrating time with a vistual river that flows endlessly as an apt metaphor of the same. The flowers and leaves floating on the virtual river can be touched, to reveal fifty multi-media rich narratives, ranging from historical to cultural and scientific notions of time.

titan Industies- Xylys

The integration of digital technologies into the retail space is still nascent, but it’s clear there is potential for enhancing the customer experience throughout all aspects of their store visit.

Here’s a quick recap of some of the common threads in the above for how digital is being used in the retail environment:

?

into the store?Providing intelligent, real-time interactive displays?Delivering context sensitive promotions and real-time sales and offers

Attracting attention, engaging customers and actively driving them

Summary

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?Enhancing the shopping experience, including easier browsing/fitting, enhancing peer and shop assistant review, easy access to product reviews and details?Capturing customer demographic and behaviour data?Providing in-store experiences?Creating a seamless connection between online and retail profiles, enabling social shopping?Proliferating interactive touchscreens through the technology getting cheaper and more reliable

BLOGSMakezine Blog "celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will."They also publish makezine as a Quarterly Volume of some of the best creative uses of appropriated technology.Instructables is where you learn to make just about any thing you might need and lots of things you probably don't too.Create Digital Music & Create Digital Motion have interesting articles quite regularily about building interfaces and devices for interaction and performance for inspiration.Understanding the industry

Resources

ELECTRONICSTom Igoe's Useful collection of resources, examples, and lecture notes for the physical computing courses at ITPLOW TECH SENSORS AND ACTUATORS (by Usman Haque and Adam Somlai-Fischer

)

.www.haque.co.uk

www.aether.hu

Resources

INTERFACE BOARDSArduino – . Arduino can be used to develop stand-alone interactive objects or can be connected to software on your computer. Also check out the site for ideas what to do with an ArduinoBASIC Stamp – Simple commands such as turning devices on or off, interfacing with sensors, etc. More advanced commands let the BASIC Stamp module interface with other integrated circuits, communicate with each other, and operate in networks. Make Controller is a line of hardware tools that provide ways to create interactive devices, machines, and environments by controlling a wide range of sensors and actuators.

freeduino

Resources

SOFTWAREProcessing (free) – An open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. MaxMSP – A graphical programming environment, which means you create your own software using a visual toolkit of objects, and connect them together with patch cords.VVVV (free) – is a toolkit for real time video synthesis. It is designed to facilitate the handling of large media environments with physical interfaces, real-time motion graphics, audio and video that can interact with many users simultaneously.Pure Data (free) – A free real-time computer music software package resembling Max.

Resources

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