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Interactive retail screen media's personalized future, Pt. I
In this two-parter from digital screen media consultant Bill Collins, DST takes a look at how the MIT Media Lab's "Glass Infrastructure" points to the personalized future of interactive retail screen media.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab's new building, an innovative RFID-enabled interactive wayfinding and personalized information system on large-format LCD touchscreens called "The Glass Infrastructure" points to the future of screen media in retail and public spaces.
If this more social and interactive model for screen media catches on, we can expect to see personalized social screenmedia systems like it being deployed on university campuses, as well as in large retail stores, shopping malls, convention centers and other built environments that serve the public.
The new $90 million Building E-14 at the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass., is sheathed in metal screening and glass which allows about half of the ambient outdoor sunlight to reach the interior of the building.
In a Boston Globe architecture review of the building designed by Pritzker-prize winning architect Fumihiko Maki of Japan, MIT Media Lab Director Frank Moss said, "Glass forces collaboration. We'll put very different groups near one another [in the new building]. And we'll have video screens everywhere, too, so people can tune in on what others are doing.''
The Glass Infrastructure puts video screens everywhere in the building
Enter The Glass Infrastructure screenmedia network.
Chaki Ng, a 36-year-old Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University with a background in eLearning, was part of a team of ten MIT Media Lab students and faculty who worked furiously earlier this year to realize Frank Moss's promise to place "video screens everywhere" via the Glass Infrastructure.
The Glass Infrastructure was completed in time for the Media Lab's semi-annual "Sponsors' Week" from May 25 to May 27, when visitors — primarily corporate sponsors who support the MIT Media Lab — were given their first grand tour of the new building.
A key feature of the Sponsor Week are the dozens of live project demos throughout the MIT Media Lab where visitors go to explore different demos and discuss them with the researchers. One of the key goals of The Glass Infrastructure is to provide an augmented experience to support this Lab exploration.
This augmented media experience allows visitors to access project information and multimedia on demand, either prior to or after seeing a project. The Glass Infrastructure also enables visitors to remember what they saw and recommends what projects they might want to see next.
The Glass Infrastructure screenmedia network is comprised of high-tech elements:
• Thirty 40-inch high-definition touchscreen-enabled LCD flat screens donated by Samsung (a project sponsor), • RFID readers donated by ThingMagic (a project sponsor), • Mac Mini controllers that were purchased by MIT, • Front- and back-end software developed by the project team. This software controls the screen user interface, the identification and location of RFID/users, dynamic management of screen content and screen status, as well as data-driven application programming interfaces (APIs) for accessing current lab projects, the artificial intelligence (AI) engine, and real-time analytics, and • Two types of small RFID receiver devices carried by visitors. For visitors to the MIT Media Lab, the receivers are attached to the back of conference badges. For MIT Media Lab students and staff, they devices look similar to credit cards so that they can be carried in wallets and purses.
The Glass Infrastructure is all about personalized interactivity
Here's how the interactivity features of The Glass Infrastructure screen media network works for a visitor with an RFID badge:
First the visitor walks into the vicinity of one of the strategically placed RFID-enabled Samsung LCD screens. Most of these large touchscreens can be found near the main entrances of the seven large lab spaces. Other screens are located near elevators or lobbies.
The RFID technology attached to the screens automatically recognizes a visitor when he comes within 5-10 feet of the screen. At that point, the visitor's photo-icon pops up at the bottom of the flat screen, where photo-icons for all the other visitors currently being identified by the network are also shown.
The visitor then can choose to log in by simply touching his own icon. In this case, a "portfolio" area for that visitor will pop up at the bottom of the screen. The person's name, photo and affiliation are displayed, along with a placeholder displaying that visitor's items of interests.
Each touchscreen has a directory-like explorer interface that showcases the research projects of the MIT Media Lab research groups that are located nearby. Visitors can browse by group and by project, and then touch the "Launch" button to view multimedia and other presentation material on Media Lab projects that interest them. By sorting the projects by proximity, more relevant projects are displayed so that the visitors will be incentivized to visit different screens and explore other projects.
If the visitor touches the "I'm Interested" button associated with a project, an item icon will be added to his portfolio. These serve as "bookmarks" for the visitor. Often a visitor will learn of a new project, collect that information, and later in the visit be reminded to view the demo at a different screen.
If the visitor touches the "More Like This" button, he will be shown an "S-curve" graphic driven by the system's AI engine which — much like Amazon.com or Netflix.com — will recommend other Media Lab projects that may interest them.
The network encourages MIT Media Lab visitors to talk and socialize
More than one visitor can log in at the same screen. In these situations, all of the portfolios of those visitors will appear on the screen at the same time. The group is thus encouraged to see who has collected which items and to engage in group discussions. In this "social/collaborative mode," people can drag and exchange items among their portfolios and can explore projects together.
This more social user experience is very different from the types of user experiences that we typically find today with single-user and one-way signage and kiosk systems.
The Glass Infrastructure also includes the "Leader board," a real-time "mash-up" application that is deployed on two large screens (more than 70-inches) to help people visualize what's happening inside the building. The data displayed includes the number of items collected by users, the top users, the top items collected, as well as statements like "Nancy Smith just collected item Smart Cities at the 6th floor screen," or "Jose Cardenas and Jack Flash just exchanged Konbit at the 3rd floor screen."
If a visitor to the MIT Media Lab wants to review her Glass Infrastructure experience after leaving Building E-14, she can log on to a website to view the information she collected during her visit. The website also can remind her who she met at the Media Lab, and help her to contact those people via e-mail.
Even though visitors who carry RFID badges with them enjoy a richer media experience on the Glass Infrastructure, the screenmedia system still enables casual visitors to the lab to interact with the screens to explore projects. The only difference between the media experience of these more casual visitors and the RFID-identified visitors is that that the casual visitors won't be detected by the RFID readers and therefore won't have access to a personal portfolio.
(Check back later today for part two of this article, to see how researchers see these technologies impacting the retail space.)
Bill Collins is principal ofDecisionPoint Media Insights, which produces custom audience research for digital signage networks and digital place-based advertising. Collins can be reached atbill@decisionpointmedia.com.
(Photo courtesy of Chaki Ng)
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