Contract - November 2012 - (Page 57)

The San Francisco Tourism office (opposite) was designed to provide visitors with an experience that gives them a deeper connection to, understanding of, and immersion in San Francisco. To accomplish this, Gensler incorporated interactivity and digital signage for a more engaging experience that people can recommend to other travelers. Technologies are tested out at the Oblong Industries Headquarters (left, top and bottom) in downtown Los Angeles. will be able to navigate the store plan and find both the items one wants to find and items that the retailer wants the customer to see. To expand on this, the retailers can tie in their omni-channel infrastructure and offer an enhanced retail experience while gathering potent data of consumer shopping habits. The indoor navigation startup aisle411 has recently engaged the more than 7,000 Walgreens stores in the United States. Customers can download this app directly to their smartphones to access maps of every Walgreens store, locate products by aisle and section, while utilizing personal shopping lists and even price-scan barcodes. Data from technology such as this will allow retailers to understand which products are in demand and can inform future store layouts. This will also enable merchandise and store design decisions based on accurate customer feedback through tracking of customers’ performance metrics. A seamless user experience A Deloitte analysis of the evolution of retail, “Store 3.0: Planning Tomorrow’s Store Today,” had noted last year that, “the role of the physical space is shifting from a transactional model to an experiential one, in which customers have a personalized experience with the brand.” Our Gensler Los Angeles office has recently started exploring the possibilities of experiential space by collaborating with Oblong, a technology company headquartered in downtown Los Angeles. Oblong is an inspiring think tank founded by MIT graduates and staffed by numerous MIT Media Lab alumni, and is most associated with a spatial operating environment (SOE) called g-speak, the technology first seen in the movie Minority Report as Steven Spielberg’s vision of how we would interact with information and visual environments in the future. During a recent visit to Oblong, our team had the opportunity to engage with several interactive displays and environments that exhibited this technology. While I loved Minority Report and the scenes with this environment in particular, it is a mind-expanding experience trying this in person. The technology fills the void between touch surfaces that we use every day, large-scale digital displays, and gesture-like devices such as a Wiimote or a Kinect. It also allows one to actually interact with objects anywhere in your view using motion. The takeaway from interacting with g-speak is how much it changes one’s view that—by using this elaborate technology—a person actually feels more natural in their interactions than expected. As a designer, I can see far ranging implications for this technology that transcend devices and surfaces. Imagine moving and changing elements of a store environment by moving your hands and simply gesturing. You could select the items that interest you based on your social media and user feedback profiles to create your own shopping experience when you enter the space. The future is now: What it means for retail design What does this mean for the spaces we design and the processes in which we now work? As you interact with these technologies, you begin to imagine an entirely new way of working and it feels very natural and instinctual versus overly technological. Much like the way we have all grown accustomed to touch-screen responsiveness and the speed at which our devices and applications perform, these contract

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Contract - November 2012

Contract - November 2012
Contents
Editorial
Industry News
Product Focus: Getting Crafty
Product Briefs: Seating and Carpet
HyundaiCard Air Lounge
Orla Kiely
Vintry Fine Wines
Louis Vuitton Selfridges
Diptych Leadenhall Market and Bleecker Street
Camper Granada
Practice: The Future in Technology and Experiential Interiors
Designers Select: Tables and Casegoods
Sources
Ad Index
Small Project: A Lighting Installation Emphasizes Decadence in a Brussels

Contract - November 2012