Razorfish + Emerging Experiences

EE is once again in Europe and this time we brought RockstAR to Cannes Lions.

The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival is the world’s biggest and most prestigious international advertising award festival, with more than 22,500 entries from all over the world. The Festival is attended by over 6,000 delegates from 90 countries.

Microsoft Tag recently came out of beta and the team asked us to help them make the announcement at Cannes Lions with the RockstAR experience at the Microsoft Experience Center (shown above). Microsoft Tag is a QR code technology that allows you to scan Tags from your mobile phone for instant access to information, websites, videos, reviews, and more. You can design custom Tags (color or b&w) and through the Microsoft Tag online tools you can manage and track analytics on their performance. It’s a great tool for advertisers across multiple channels.

As you may already know we integrated it into RockstAR so that users can snap a pic of the Tag in the experience and instantly download their RockstAR photos. It seemed like a good fit given the nature Cannes as an entertainment destination. And of course we integrated the usual social components like Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.

In the spirit of the World Cup we’ve added players from all over the world for users to interact with.

Despite Fedex losing some of our equipment, the event was a huge success (good thing Steve always has a backup). After all this isn’t our first rodeo with the Microsoft Tag team.

Luckily we didn’t blow up any computers, however we did have a blast getting exclusive access to experience the new Xbox Kinect technology! We can’t wait to get our hands on this technology, the possibilities are endless.

Check out the rest of our photos on Flickr. (even more photos and videos coming soon!)

Viva la France!

The Razorfish team in Germany partnered with Realtime Technology AG to build configuration experiences for the Audi A1 world premiere at the international motor show in Geneva. They are designed to attract and engage young people and to demonstrate the wide range of customization possibilities of the new Audi.

The first experience is located on the main stage, featuring a 24″ Multi-Touch display allowing users to interact with the car configuration and an additional 65″ display with synchronized high-definition 3d-rendering in real-time to garner even more attention. The complex configuration scenario is wrapped in a simple and easy-to-use interface. The application is based on Windows 7 and the Razorfish Touch Framework.

The second configurator runs on Microsoft Surface and is based on the Audi A4 configurator. The multi-user environment allows individuals to place physical tokens on the table and configure their favorite A1 in a collaborative way. The extravagant competition kit adds exciting new possibilities to spice up the user’s virtual car.

Both configurators can be seen live at Geneva Motor Show until March 14, 2010.

Neue Digitale / Razorfish developed the first realtime 3d configurator for Microsoft Surface which was showcased at this year’s IAA – the world’s leading automotive fair.

Developed in collaboration with Realtime Technology AG, the application allows multiple users to configure an Audi A4 simultaneously by changing the car’s paint finishes, rims and by selecting and coloring style package components. The configured A4 is experienced in an immersive 3d environment, in which users can navigate seamlessly by zooming and panning using a multitouch-enabled interface. Special perspectives allow a more detailed view for specific components, for example for configuring rims or taking a closer look at interior details.

To control the actual car configuration process users can place multilingual tokens on the table. All available options appear around the token and can be selected by touching or rotating the physical token.

The final car configuration is projected on an external High Definition display, attracting and engaging other visitors.

Iain McDonald with Amnesia Razorfish introduced the Lonely Planet Surface application at Remix Australia – check out the video!

Fast Company, after a couple of “Killer Apps” articles (11 Killer Apps and 5 More Killer Apps), has finally compiled a Complete Guide for everyone to enjoy. Obviously this list will probably be outdated in a week with all the cool stuff coming out (hehe), however we’re proud to announce that 3 apps from the Razorfish Emerging Experiences teams have made the list!

For more info on each app …

• Surface Table Toss
• DaVinci: Microsoft Surface Physics Illustrator
• Amnesia Razorfish Staff Directory on Microsoft Surface

Congrats to all the other companies that made the list too. Keep up the good work!

Check out the above technology demonstration of the multi-touch Virtual Earth control and the Razorfish Touch Framework. This video demonstrates a weather experience and the cross-platform capabilities of the framework on Microsoft Surface or other touch-enabled devices.

Extending social experiences to the digital out-of-home and retail environment is a growing trend. One of the advantages of Microsoft Surface over other technologies is supporting engaging social experiences. The table-top form-factor and massively multi-touch input (more than 52 concurrent touches) lends itself well to support multi-user social interaction. Here are some of the ways we have used Microsoft Surface to support social experiences.

At the 2008 Razorfish Client Summit, the Seattle office created a social experience that allowed attendees to place their badge on Surface to enter a raffle for a free XBOX and bid on guitar signed by the “fifth Beetle” George Martin. In addition, attendees could form connections between eachother using the Surface table – as connections were made, behind-the-scenes we would e-mail each attendee the other person’s contact information. The client summit experience was extended for the Razorfish Atlanta Open House. Badges were tagged and guests congregated around the table to exchange information and connect with people that shared similar interests.

Recently our friends in the Neue Digitale / Razorfish in Germany created a social application for the Microsoft Xtopia conference named “Event Connect” that allowed attendees to access their Facebook account on Surface. Users could exchange photos of the event and send friend requests to eachother within the experience. This same experience was recently re-skinned by the Austin office and featured at the 2009 Razorfish SXSW party.

The Amnesia Razorfish office in Australia printed Surface tags on their business cards . When placed on Surface, these cards can access a variety of social feeds, including blog posts, Twitter updates and photos from Flickr. Check out video of the application here.

DaVinci is a Microsoft Surface application that blurs the lines between the physical and virtual world by combining object recognition, real-world physics simulation and gestural interface design.

One of the important design and technology considerations around building direct manipulation interfaces is to ensure virtual objects behave like real-world objects. The real world physics behavior of these objects is a type of visual affordance, which aids in delivering an intuitive user experience – users know what to expect when they manipulate objects in the virtual world when they behave like objects in the real world. The physics engine used in DaVinci is being applied to our other applications to create interfaces which have natural real world physics.

The DaVinci experience could easily be extended to teach Newton’s laws of motion, gravity, friction, orbital motion and other physics concepts in a classroom setting.

We just passed the one year anniversary of the launch of the AT&T Surface Experience – the first public deployment of Microsoft Surface. To celebrate the anniversary, we are posting some behind-the-scenes pictures of the launch.

The teams on launch night consisted of representatives from AT&T, Microsoft and Razorfish. The launch night activities included unpacking and setup of the Surface devices, construction of the fixtures, installation of the Surface application and the deployment of the Surface application content from the centralized content management system. Despite some network glitches and last-minute content changes, the launch was a huge success. Each location opened their doors the following morning to a wave of customers and media.

AT&T Surface Launch Pictures

The Microsoft Surface technology offers such great possibilities. Consider how we solved one of man’s greatest challenges – how to watch multiple NCAA March Madness games simultaneously. These are the wonders of what you can create while working at the office late. Notice how the interface allows us to easily switch between live feeds as the games are in progress. This is just another example of how Microsoft Surface technology can deliver an innovative and engaging customer experience.