Get your hands on the 5D experience by embarking on a unique shopping journey that utilizes a variety of platforms and technologies, including a first of it’s kind, seamlessly-synchronized transparent interactive display wall. It’s located in the Microsoft booth (1005) on Level 3. And to see more of 5D in action, head on over to emergingexperiences.com/5D.
Our lab is buzzing with activity as the team prepares for the National Retail Federation’s 102nd Annual Convention & EXPO in New York. On display will be the latest iteration of Razorfish 5D— the world’s first cross-device, cross-OS, connected retail platform. Launched at last year’s NRF convention, 5D has already been launched in several markets and was used to create Audi City London, a one-of-a-kind immersive virtual showroom. This year we’re showing how our platform can power customized, personalized and seamlessly synchronized shopping experiences. We threw in some augmented reality and a bunch of transparent displays as well.
Our team will be demonstrating the 5D experience in booth #1005 on Level 3 of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. If you can’t make the show, be sure to follow us on Twitter to get the latest updates.
Most Contagious, that is.
We’re excited to announce that Audi City London has claimed Contagious Magazine’s Most Contagious Retail Award at a ceremony today in London. This experience was a year-long collaborative effort between Audi and a wide range of partners, and was launched near Piccadilly Circus just ahead of the summer Olympics. It is delivered by one of the most technologically advanced retail environments ever created and features a variety of multi-touch displays for configuring your Audi from millions of possible combinations. Once you’ve created your personalized Audi at this groundbreaking dealership, you can toss it onto one of the floor-to-ceiling digital “powerwalls” to visualize and explore your configuration at a true 1:1 scale. Audi City London is a true dealership of the future and an effort we were proud to be part of.
Photo: Gaurav Singh
When we’re playing in our Lab, we’re always looking for creative ways to push the limits of technology. Some of our projects are just for fun, and others, like London’s Audi City, completely reinvent the way people shop. We were even thinking about digital wallets before they were cool. So when we set out to create the Razorfish 5D platform, our goal was to design a powerful and highly immersive way for brands to connect with consumers—before, during and after the shopping experience. In our latest video, we show how our 5D platform seamlessly connects a variety of digital devices to better attract consumers into the store, drive product engagement and arm store associates with more contextualized digital tools. The end result is a fun and personal experience, the way shopping should be.
We’re excited by the launch of a revolutionary showroom experience for a premiere automotive brand. After a year of collaboration between Audi and a wide range of partners, Audi City has launched near Piccadilly Circus in London, ahead of the 2012 Olympics.
Audi City London is a groundbreaking dealership experience delivered by one of the most technologically advanced retail environments ever created. The digital environment features multi-touch displays for configuring your Audi vehicle from millions of possible combinations. Your personalized car is visualized in photorealistic 3D using real-time render technology, making the Audi City vehicle configurator the most advanced in the world. After personalizing your Audi, you can toss your vehicle onto one of the floor-to-ceiling digital “powerwalls” to visualize your car configuration in life-size scale. From here, you can use gestures to interact with your personalized vehicle, exploring every angle and detail in high resolution using Kinect technology.
A purely digital showroom can’t deliver on the tactile experience of buying a car. Therefore, a store associate can save your configuration on a RFID-enabled USB stick and guide you into a personal consultation area that features a variety of tactile objects. These objects help the customers get hands-on with the materials of the vehicle including car exterior color and finish options and interior upholstery options. Each of these tangible objects are digitally-tagged through RFID technology. You can bring bring any of these physical objects over to the configurator experience and the corresponding exterior paint finishes and interior options will automatically update your vehicle configuration.
When purchasing a car, the customer journey occurs across multiple channels. In order to integrate and simplify the car buying process, we’ve allowed customers to retrieve their online car configurations in the showroom environment. In addition, any car configuration made in the showroom is synchronized to your personal USB stick. Simply pop in the USB stick at home and the web-based configurator is automatically launched with the exact car configuration you created in the showroom. This allows Audi to deliver a “start anywhere, end anywhere” buying cycle for the customer, which has proven elusive for retailers.
Not only is Audi City a premier showroom environment, the dealership concept represents a fundamental shift in retail strategy for the brand. This new small-footprint retail format brings Audi closer to their customers, not only geographically but also emotionally. The smaller-footprint concept will launch in metropolitan environments and reach a younger urban and digitally-enabled demographic. After hours, the environment will serve as a cultural center in the larger community by playing host to readings, round-table discussions and art exhibitions.
“Audi City combines the best of two worlds – digital product presentation and personal contact with the dealer” says Peter Schwarzenbauer, Member of the Board of Management at Audi. “People are placing greater emphasis than ever before on a direct and personal bond of trust with their vehicle brand – especially in respect of the increasing variety of products and available information. Thus, with Audi City we are creating a one-stop-shop for experiencing our brand. It is right in the midst of our customers’ lives, yet seamlessly connected to the online range offered by the four rings.”
Audi announced at the London launch that 20 showrooms in other major international cities will follow by 2015.
The Razorfish Emerging Experiences team showed up in force for the ReMIX South conference. Luke Hamilton presented “The Interface Revolution”, a discussion about emerging tablet technologies and what they mean for consumers. He also provided best practices for creating tablet experiences and key insights on how to bring these interfaces across multiple devices. Jarrett Webb presented “An Introduction to Kinect Development” providing insight on how to get started building experiences for the Kinect hardware. Steve Dawson and Alex Nichols were “Kinecting Technologies” which recreated scenes from famous Sci-Fi movies utilizing the Kinect combined with other advanced technologies.
While not presenting at the event, the team enjoyed presentations by Albert Shum, Arturo Toledo, Rick Barraza, Josh Blake and many other experts in the fields of Kinect, Tablet/Mobile development and UX/Design.
For those who are interested, we encourage you to download the code for the Kinecting Technologies presentation. In order to run the samples, you’ll need:
Additionally, the voice-control home automation sample requires the X10 ActiveHome Pro Hardware and the X10 ActiveHome Pro SDK.
Thanks go out to the organizers of ReMIX South for putting together a wonderful event. We’ll see you next year!
Watch the session videos here.
Last month, WIRED magazine published an article entitled “A Thousand Points of Infrared Light” which highlights the effect that Kinect has had in transforming the way that we interact with digital experiences. Timed around the announcement of the official Kinect SDK, the article focuses initially on how this revolutionary device allowed researchers in robotics to take their experiences out of the lab with little cost (the Microsoft Kinect is an add on peripheral that costs $150).
It’s a great read on the subject on how a company can embrace the “hacker” community, thereby supporting innovation well beyond a products’ intended use. The first couple of weeks of Microsoft’s stance on Kinect hacks was uncertain, however Microsoft soon embraced the community.
WIRED researched the thousands of Kinect hacks in the wild and invited a handful of researchers, visual artists and technicians to be included in the magazine. We were excited to be included. Check out the iPad version of the magazine to see video of our DaVinci Kinect experience.
Thanks again to WIRED for the props and we look forward to sharing more experiences with everyone in the near future.