Technology for Consumption

Introducing a new technology into a retail environment requires a good understanding of the types of customers you are trying to entice to use it and why. Technology can be rejected and ignored if it is not adding value to the consumers shopping experience. Is the technology there to enhance an existing product experience or inform the consumer about the product to help in the decision making process? Do your research and get to know your customers, their shopping habits and process. Most importantly get to know how they shop your services or products.


Technology should move beyond being merely digital billboards and displays that offers an alternative marketing message with more glitz design, and work towards helping consumer learn and make informed choices. The consumer is often either already fairly sure what they are looking for with existing knowledge gained from the web or social groups, or are making a compulsive purchase there in the store. This is when they are most influenced by what they learn on the spot. Making the technology available to help with either of those scenarios is going to delight and ultimately gain the consumers trust and desire to use the technology at hand. Even if the sale is not made at that moment the brand loyalty will be building, and will lead to greater return for the next purchase.


Consider how the technology can be integrated into people's digital lives. Allow sharing socially what they find and ask questions to those that they trust easily. Think how the experience can be pre-sale, present-sale and post-sale. What might they bring, create and take away from an interaction in your retail space. Building brand recognition and loyalty will ultimately lead to repeat business and word of mouth spread of your name and the experience.

Microsoft Kinect for Retail Experiences

Microsoft Kinect seems to be popping up everywhere and is definitely a topic I find myself talking about more with retail clients on projects. With the general acceptance now of the Kinect on the XBox platform and with all the Kinect game titles, people are beginning to understand gesture based interactions. Plus with the new Kinect Xbox applications such as TMZ and iHeartRadio, that I have worked on these interactions are moving beyond games towards application experiences. The next logical question we are addressing now is what comes next and how might we use this device in the consumer space, other than what Microsoft has planned for the technology on Xbox. Clients now are coming and asking how they might get in on the Kinect buzz and incorporate it in their retail space. We have all seen the research and hacking projects that people have already started making using Kinect, such as controlling helicopters and making shadow puppets, the reality though is how can these ideas translate into an in-store experience. Before I get into that let's outline some of the considerations that need to be given to a general Kinect interaction.

Give me some space, please.

The first thing to understand about Kinect is that it needs more space than a standard touch Kiosk. Ideally it should have a dedicated area for the interaction that allows for someone, or maybe a few people, watching or interacting, to be standing around and most likely be waving their hands about, 8-12ft is not unusual. So depending on the overall experience you are trying to create you may want to think how it can work in your retail environment, especially if space is an issue.

What you need to be careful of is anyone that is just trying to passively shop and maybe wants to pass by the display isn't inadvertently sucked into the interact zone. You should make sure they aren't going to interfere with the Kinect camera, breaking the experience for someone else and more importantly doesn't end up getting a slap to the face by a energetic consumer already in the zone. I think, as the examples below shows, that Best Buy and Microsoft Store, do a good job of defining a space for the interaction and making it clear to passersby not to enter the "interact zone" with the use of colored carpet and a small wall at the back of the zone to allow people to pass in safety. The Microsoft store places the experience at the back and at the front of the store in dedicated areas out of the way. The individual using the Kinect can also see where they are meant to stand and move and not have to worry about bumping into people. This keeps everyone aware of their place in the interaction or not.

Consideration also needs to be given to the height of the camera, it is optimal to have the camera at about waist height to allow for tall and short people(think children) but it can also be placed in other locations but it can affect it's visual zone or picking people's full bodies up for the tracking.

Get Moving.

Next consideration is to the interactive experience that best suits a Kinect device. The Kinect camera is not at this point as sensitive to body detail as you might expect, it at this time cannot pick up for example individual fingers and facial details without some modifications or custom work, that is not to say it cannot be done or isn't being worked on by others. The out of the box experience is much more about skeletal tracking. Below shows an example of what the Kinect sees and interprets to make the interactions. As can be seen it is basically a skeleton stick figure.

This means that the interactions are all about moving parts of your body, hence the warning about space for people to move. The motion tracking is really very good and fast, very little delay. The real issues arise in what gestures work best and are most easily picked up by the camera.

I have found that big exaggerated gestures are easiest to learn and use for the camera and the user. Something like swiping your right arm from far right to left (or vice-versa) or raising you arm in front of you. Lifting you legs and leaning also work well. These gestures really benefit from short animated tutorials with the experience or some clue to what the interaction needs to be with arrows for example. Things get a little difficult when you try spinning around or standing sideways, the camera tends to get confused when parts of the body overlap, it can make the skeleton jump around and get a little funky. We have found that we can make these harder interaction work by placing the camera off center but this starts using more space and makes the arrangement more awkward for a tight retail environment. We even worked out some solutions using two cameras but that we found works best for autoshows where space isn't an issue.

With that in mind the interactions for Kinect are best for big interactions versus very detailed and intricate manipulations at this time, we are not quite at the level that "Minority Report" has filled our heads with, but I am sure we will get there. Still you can come up with some neat interactions and designs using these limitations. An important thing keep in mind is that many people do the same action differently. Just asking anyone to swipe in front of them and see how many ways different people do this action, so every interaction should be considerate of interpretation, by the individual. Allow for the gesture not being recognized the first time by the device, make the user feel compelled to try again and try to minimize frustration.

So now we understand the basic requirements of Kinect the really interesting next phase is how we might use this platform to improve a retail experience for consumers. Where does Kinect find a natural fit?

Kinect with Consumers

Kinect was of course designed to be used as an entertainment device for the Xbox, and that is where it excels in its experiences. Those experiences that consider it's origins seem to perform best. People like moving around and it makes them generally happy to do so, hence it's great success in the game sector.

However, people don't like to look like fools in front of others, and nothing is going to make you look more foolish than the wrong experience in the wrong environment at the wrong time. This means that this device and it's interactions can create amazing marketing and in-store experience but chose the experience carefully. Careful consideration needs to be given to the consumers you are targeting and where you position this interaction, as well as, what you goal is in getting people to use this gesture kiosk. For example, of course children are happy to jump about and be energetic interacting with Kinect, but older people less so. I would say the safest bet is to think about what supporting role a Kinect can play in a retail environment as either an extension of a marketing campaign or as a concentrated interactive experience. I wouldn't for example recommend thinking of the Kinect experience like you might a touchscreen kiosk and start product browsing your entire catalogue and filtering results.

Because Kinect is often setup with a large display, remember people will be 6-8ft from the screen for the camera to do full body tracking the content needs to work at distance. I would even say that the bigger the display the better to not only allow others to notice the experience from across the store but also as it gives a wonderful sense of control moving larger than life objects and keeps with the entertainment factor. This means you need to think more like a billboard designer than a touch screen. Content needs to be big and have nice large target zones for interactions to occur. It is a little like designing for mobile and finger interactions scaled up. Density of buttons should be very light and spread out. I would suggest 10 or less items on the screen at anyone time, and definitely people are not going to be reading product descriptions at this size, leave that for the touch kiosks, or mobile users.

Something else I should add, is that Kinect also does voice detection and can be setup to recognize certain key-phrases, I won't go into details here, as voice activation and use can be difficult in noisy environments such as most retail stores. Of course, if your retail environment is quiet and maybe more exclusive this can be a great way to also interact with the device commanding things with your voice.

So where to use it?

I would suggest studying your consumers interacting with your store and watching where there might be a good fit for a device that creates dwell time and think about the interference with regular shoppers doing ordinary shopping. I would also be considerate of products that you sell in-store that would benefit from a motion based interaction like Kinect. Looking for screws in a hardware store or finding a pair of shoes may not be the best product to target with this experience. Kinect will never replace the value of actually trying something on or make easy a entire catalogue browsing experience. I also would not recommend using it as a store map experience, it would be difficult to have multiple users and probably prove more frustrating to get to what you were trying to achieve than just using a more standard kiosk.

Where Kinect excels is in enhancing an experience of a product as say a virtual mirror allowing uses to do things they couldn't ordinarily such as see the back of themselves or change their environment they see themselves in.  So changing rooms would be an ideal experience, as well as quite private for someone whom might be self conscious about showing off.

I recently worked on a compelling example of one use for Kinect that allowed a consumer to browse and try a "virtual" 3D Nissan Pathfinder, that hadn't yet gone into production. The model was detailed enough to show all the details and features of the car, as well as, change color and walk around the car in real-time inside and out. These beyond reality experiences work well with Kinect and with a supporting interaction such as touch kiosk for more detailed browsing and interaction can be very pleasing to use and create social buzz.

In summary, Kinect is a new and exciting development in technology, it offers yet another way to interact and leave an impression with consumers. At this point its value is in extending a brand with an entertainment factor, it can engage with a consumer and offer a great way to see things beyond a physical product. Most people we have watched using this interaction have enjoyed the difference it brings and will often encourage others to get involved. It reminds me a lot of chimps watching each other and learning something new, people like chimps are inherently social animals and Kinect is a public and social experience, it works well to produce crowds and giggles. I hope that this article gives a little insight to some of the realities of Kinect for retail but also some of the possibilities. As the technology gets more accurate and better the experiences are likewise going to improve and be even more engaging to use. I am looking forward to where my clients want to go with it.

Brand experiences not products

I think we all believe that life's experiences are more important to us than the material possessions that we own. Well Susan Weinschenk recently wrote about the research that Carter and Gilovich did to prove out this idea and they uncovered some valuable ideas.

Their research looked to uncover why we value experiences over possessions. They proved that people use experiences to define their sense of self. People prefer to talk about themselves in terms of experiences rather than what they own. This can be thought of as part of our life story we carry around with us. People it seems prefer to talk about purchasing items through the experiences they have with it, rather than the material ownership of the product.

Knowing people by what they have experienced and how they use a product is more likely to give us a greater insight to the person than what they bought. Our memories associated with an object make that object more valuable and satisfying when the association is positive.

So with this in mind Susan put forward these considerations for products and experiences.

• If you are marketing a product, put emphasis on what experiences you will have with it rather than what it will look like/feel like/ be like to own it.
• If you are collecting purchasing info about target clients (as has been in the news lately with questions about privacy) you’d be better off to know what people’s purchases imply about the experiences they are having rather than just inferring from the data what they own.
• The user experience of a product is more important than we think. It’s not just the idea that the product should be easy to use/ interesting. The EXPERIENCE part of user experience is not just a fancy word to use. People remember and evaluate, and even cherish experiences, even with technology.
• Customers may resonate more with a brand if they can get a sense of what the organization has DONE, not just what products or services they sell.

Retailing an Experience

In an article found here IDEO turns it's focus on retail and the future of the physical store. So much talk these days is about how brick and mortar stores are disappearing and becoming obsolete with the rising of internet purchases and consumer shopping habits. As this article suggests in is probably very premature to assume that that consumers are completely over physical stores and transactions. People like to connect with people and from a branding stand point and engagement with consumers the store still leads the way, and probably won't be replaced anytime soon with a digital alternative. So what things should be considerations for the stores of the future? This the article goes on the explain, is where a store needs to evolve to the new needs and expectations of consumers.

Considerations include.

Design stores that are more than places to buy stuff.
People still visit stores, people still go out at weekends and shop around, even if they ultimately do not buy from the store they are wandering and touching real products. Stores can use this to their advantage, making casual browsing, enjoyable, the goal should be brand experience.
Employ brand enthusiasts
Today more than ever, people share their opinions about things they buy, people love reviews and ratings. Stores should be hiring brand enthusiasts that are like evangelists to the products. These are people that care about the products they sell and want others to join their joy in ownership.
Target existing users of your product
People that are already consumers of your brand, have most likely bought into the dream and vision. Building in-store experiences that focus on education, trials and membership to these users of your product are going to build longer term relationships, and advocates. It's much more about open relationships than before.
Make shops into R&D labs
If one thing differentiates a physical store from a digital store it's the physical face-time with the consumers. This is an opportunity to speak directly with people and gauge honest feedback on new initiatives or products. This allows the physical space to become a feedback loop directly with customers.

Nice article and some interesting value adds to physical stores of the future. The internet has certainly empowered the consumer, but really people still want those physical interactions and feelings of belonging that brands promote, these ideas are definitely inline with those thoughts. These future stores could add huge brand value and loyalty, and I think Apple stores already show the way and how well it works.