Steve has a nice write-up on his website about the benefits of this approach and we were happy to see it being picked by a number of online publications including TechCrunch and Engadget.
With the wide-spread adoption of NFC at the horizon we’ll hopefully see concepts like this becoming reality soon.

The arrival of NFC technology promises to usher in a variety of new types of multi-channel customer experiences. While NFC technology is still in its infancy, our team has focused our efforts on research & development around experiences that can be enabled by this emerging platform. One of the many uses of NFC is activating mobile payment.

The Razorfish Digital Wallet is a mobile application we developed to demonstrate how customers can send and receive mobile payments over NFC. In the future, this type of consumer-to-consumer payment will become commonplace. For instance, you’ll pay your babysitter or settle a bet with a friend by simply tapping your mobile devices.

In the above video, we’ll showcase the consumer-to-consumer payment scenario along with a variety of other scenarios. NFC has arrived and we’re excited to integrate this technology in our experiences.

Check back soon as we will be posting a behind-the-scenes walkthru of the application.

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:

• Kinect for Windows SDK
• Microsoft Speech Runtime (x86 version)
• Microsoft Speech SDK
• Kinect Language Pack

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.

One of the questions we constantly asked ourselves was how we could utilize Microsoft Surface as an easy and collaborative sharing platform. Surface is a product designed for social environments, attracting and engaging people to take a seat around the table and interact. As smartphones take over the mobile market, it’s important to recognize that people expect to have intuitive ways to connect their handsets and share pictures, information or other data. But we still haven’t seen a solution which leverages the whole Surface potential to create a compelling mobile sharing experience.

This is where our newly developed Amnesia Connect platform comes in. It demonstrates the most seamless and visual sharing opportunities a Surface table can probably provide. With support for any number of mobile devices, users can literally see-through their device and share content as easy and tactile as it can get. It is perfectly suited for sharing visual data like images and video, but works for any other type of content as well.

At the moment we support iPhone and iPad devices and are currently evaluating other platforms as well. But we can already tell that it’s heart-warming to see Microsoft’s and Apple’s devices playing so nicely together and we can’t wait to throw other players into the mix as well.

Read the full press release here.

The Consumer Electronics Show was back for 2011 and our team was on the ground in Las Vegas. We have a number of initiatives going on at CES this year.

First, our team was involved in the Microsoft Surface 2.0 launch. We’ve been working with the Surface team for a few months on the next generation of Surface. We’ve been porting our applications to run on the latest version. We can proudly announce that we are Surface 2.0 ready and we look forward to supporting the new platform and bringing the solution to our clients. The Microsoft Surface announcement caught the media by surprise – it’s been over 3 years since the original Surface was announced. The new device is faster, leaner and costs less than the previous version of Surface. We’ll have an in-detail analysis of Microsoft Surface 2.0 posted on the blog shortly.

Second, we were involved in the launch of another experience for one of our clients. We created a solution that will be experienced by millions of consumers in the market. Unfortunately our involvement must remain confidential so we can’t go into too many details. Let’s just say it was definitely one of those opportunities that we could not pass up!

We took the opportunity to explore the trade show floor in an effort to educate ourselves on the latest technology offerings. We hope to bring some of these technologies to our clients in 2011. Here are some of the technologies that we’ve got our eye on.

Tablets

2011 has been declared the “year of the tablet”. There were certainly no shortage of tablets at CES. In fact, about 80 new tablet form-factor devices were announced at CES this year.

From a hardware perspective, tablets are getting thinner, lighter and more powerful thanks to innovation around chip technology from companies like Intel, ARM, nVidia and Qualcomm. There are a variety of new form-factors hitting the market. The Eee Pad Transformer tablet can be docked in a base which transforms the device into a traditional laptop form-factor. The Dell Inspiron Duo tablet features a reversible screen to accomplish the same thing.

There were a variety of different screen sizes available. One of the interesting debates between amongst members of our team was around the usefulness of the small screen tablets. These “tweener” devices feature screens between the size of a typical phone and an iPad. The smaller size means they are more portable than an iPad, however they still can’t fit in your pocket and they can’t make phone calls.

One of the most impressive devices was the BlackBerry Playbook. The device features a brilliant user interface which makes use of NUI design principals – direct interaction of content through the use of gestures. In addition, the performance of the device was exceptional. We can’t wait to start developing for this platform.

For the first time, we had the opportunity to see the new Android Honeycomb tablet OS. The exerience is decidedly Android retaining much of the same design language. Improvements have been made to the user interface to take into account the additional tablet real-estate. In all honesty, we were slightly disappointed with the user interface. We were hoping for something game-changing from Google and instead, they delivered an experience that was transitional, not transformational.

One of the major disappointments was the lack of direction from Microsoft on tablet devices. We were crossing our fingers for an announcement around a tablet operating system that was lightweight and provided an exceptional user experience similar to what is being provided on Windows Phone 7 platform. And we wanted this platform soon.

Microsoft did acknowledge they are behind in the space. Right now, their story is positioning Windows 8 as the solution for tablets by supporting system-on-a-chip architecture. By supporting this hardware platform, Microsoft will be able to deliver Windows experiences on tablet devices while taking into account battery life and OS performance.

Unfortunately, no announcements were made around the Windows 8 user interface. Delivering an exceptional tablet UI will be essential to their strategy. It is likely Microsoft will adopt the “Metro” design language currently being used for Windows Phone 7 and Microsoft Surface 2.0.

Gesture Control and Natural Interaction

With the release and success of Xbox Kinect, the gesture control market is heating up. Much like the original iPhone brought touch interaction into the mainstream by putting millions of devices in the hands of consumers, Xbox Kinect will do the same for gesture control. The way we interact with computers is fundamentally changing and we are getting in on the ground floor.

We’ve taken the opportunity to develop for the Kinect platform, however we were looking for a commercial-grade solution to bring to our clients. Enter PrimeSense.

PrimeSense licenses their technology to Microsoft for use in the Xbox Kinect, therefore they seemed like the perfect partner to deliver the hardware and software to support commercialized gesture control solutions. We are actively working with PrimeSense to develop for their platform. Their OpenNI initiative hopes to create a framework for standardization of natural interface development across devices.

We see gesture control technology being used in an in-home setting and also in retail environments. This technology can be utilized to create at-home shopping experiences which combine natural interaction and augmented reality. Imagine being able to virtually try on clothes from the comfort of your own home. Or order a pizza with a flick of the wrist from the comfort of your couch.

We have been champions of the use of interactive experiences in the retail environment and we have the statistics to prove it. To date, the majority of our experiences have utilized touch. This technology provides a new user interaction paradigm and offers an entirely new world of possibilities in the retail space.

Touch Screens

Touch screen technology is evolving rapidly. Devices are becoming larger, cheaper and more reliable. Exciting new form-factors and multi-touch hardware will help us deliver new experiences to our clients in 2011.

3M Touch Systems has exciting new hardware and form-factors hitting the market which utilize their massively multi-touch projected capacitive technology. This technology provides extremely stable multi-touch that supports a large amount of touch points. 3M is brining 23” and 32” screen sizes to the market. In additional, the screens can be integrated into a multi-device array to build large size touch wall and table experiences.

We also had some hands-on time with systems from PQ Labs and Multitouch.fi. Both vendors offer touch solutions that are unique and exceptional. We look forward to working with these companies in the future.

Display Technology

Displays are getting thinner, lighter and more energy efficient. 3D technology is also evolving quickly. Much like last year, 3D display technology was everywhere. The most impressive innovation in the 3D TV space comes from LG. They demonstrated how their 3D technology has been standardized – every TV on display in their booth could utilize the same pair of glasses to deliver an exceptional 3D experience. They also demonstrated flicker-less 3D which produced a better 3D picture than we’ve seen on any other consumer device.

The glasses-less 3D technology was a disappointment. There isn’t enough discernable depth with the current iteration of the technology. Certainly this will change over time, however the promise of ditching the glasses has yet to be fulfilled. We wouldn’t be surprised if this changes in 2011.

In-Car Technology

Ford had the major innovations in the automotive space. The Ford Focus Electric vehicle was announced along with an update to the MyFord Touch interface. The interface features a number of enhancements including the ability to visualize your destination and alert the driver if there isn’t adequate charge in the vehicle’s battery. In addition, an efficiency coach monitors your driving habits to advise changes to your driving style and an “Emotive Display” visualizes butterflies when you are driving in a way that adds range to your vehicle.

MyFord Mobile was also announced. The app allows you to locate charging stations, unlock doors and find the location of the vehicle. In addition, the app goes social with driving behavior monitoring – achievements are awarded once certain milestones are met. These achievements can be shared on Facebook.

Mobile continues to demonstrate its growing importance with many different audiences. People are buying smartphones, texting like mad, and choosing the phone over the PC for web browsing at a surprising clip. All of this points to a need to take mobile ever more seriously. At the same time, the possibilities of mobile display advertising continue to evolve, most recently with mobile rich media formats bursting onto the scene. We’ve gathered some of the best examples of mobile rich media across a wide variety of platforms, networks, and 3rd party specialists – including the Razorfish-built iAd for JCPenney. Check it out.

Before we left for the evening, we recorded a quick walkthrough of the Windows Phone booth and EMC (Executive Meeting Center) locations where we have touch experiences deployed to support the Windows Phone 7 Series launch event.

Members of the press and blogging community have been recording video of the experience throughout the conference. These videos have begun appearing online – here are a couple of the videos we’ve found:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-30XRO4Wxw
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDYgMGUCvj4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYW2hL9ZTPE
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkHmmjRhgLk
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDLG9vJohjE

After a long night of celebrating the successful launch of Windows Phone 7 Series in Barcelona, we are back at the Windows Phone booth at Mobile World Congress. The crowds are still huge and the experiences are running great. Each experience is collecting touch and interaction information in the background – we are going to begin processing this information to determine how many sessions we are seeing, average session time, the most popular areas of the experience, etc. We will use this information as a guide to optimize the experience for the next event.

The Windows Phone team is showing live projected demonstrations of the device in the theatre area – these demonstrations are attracting huge crowds.

Members of the press camped out at the Windows Phone press lounge located across the plaza from Mobile World Congress. Because of the huge turnout for the announcement, much of the press watched the launch event live from the downstairs press lounge. After the show, we launched 6 experiences at this location allowing members the press to touch and interact with Windows Mobile 7 Series for the first time.

Members of the press who weren’t able to watch the event in the theatre or the press lounge huddled around screens outside in the reception area. We went live with 2 experiences at this location.

Conference attendees watching the event live at the Windows Phone booth at Mobile World Congress. We had an additional 2 experiences running at this location.

Cameras were out as the interface was unveiled for the first time. The phone interface design was kept a secret up until launch day. Preventing pictures and other leaks of information from making it to the press turned out to be a huge undertaking. The Windows Phone team went to great lengths to prevent leaks – in fact, many of the Microsoft employees working on the team never had the opportunity to see the interface until launch day. We based our experience off of some hands-on time in Redmond and videos of the experience. Our team was able to reverse-engineer the design, animation and interaction of the user interface. Accuracy was extremely important and we had to ensure the design and motion in our experience was a perfect re-creation of the experience on the actual device. We built the experience on top of the Razorfish Touch Framework. Using the framework allowed us to rapidly develop the application from scratch in under 4 weeks.

The product launch was a huge success and the Windows Phone team has been celebrating in Barcelona. The reaction from the press and blog community has been overwhelmingly positive. The conference is far from over but so far we are off to a great start!