Article

Is this the future of interactive retail screen media?

Work underway at MIT's Media Lab points to the future of screen media in retail.

August 15, 2010

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 screen media 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
 
Chaki Ng, a 36-year-old Ph.D. candidate at Harvard University with a background in e-learning, 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.
 
Key to 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 screen media 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. 

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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 his Glass Infrastructure experience after leaving Building E-14, he can log on to a website to view the information collected during his visit. The website also can remind him who he met at the Media Lab, and help him contact those people via e-mail.
 
Although visitors who carry RFID badges with them enjoy a richer media experience on the Glass Infrastructure, the 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 have access to a personal portfolio.

Researcher sees retail as the next frontier for "adaptive experiences"

Because of Chaki Ng's background in "adaptive learning" (he was the co-founder of an e-learning firm called Interactive Constructs), he has a unique perspective on how children and adults think and learn. This helps Ng understand the opportunity that retailers now have to leverage personalized interactive technology like The Glass Infrastructure screen media network that will help shoppers navigate and shop stores in a way that's easier, more fun and more personalized.
 
"No two learners learn the same way and at the same pace," Ng said, "so you need to personalize and follow their ‘path' to learning … This concept of ‘adaptive' is now very popular and is quite well-understood by people involved in eLearning and Ecommerce, but in physical spaces like retail we have not yet developed these adaptive experiences."
 
In retail, shoppers go into a store and look at merchandise organized in aisles and buy it if they like it, Ng says. That process of shopping hasn't really changed for thousands of years, and shoppers essentially rely on the retailer to present them what the retailer thinks they'll like, he says.

In a retail store, a shopper's feet act the way that a mouse acts with a computer, and the shopper "browses" the store by moving from one place to another, he says. To look for something, shoppers often look at static signage to sort by category and sometimes ask a sales associate, then point their mouse (feet) to the target space, he says. They look, see something and move in the direction to where they might want to buy something, he says.
 
"If I don't see something, chances are I won't know it exists somewhere in the store," Ng said. "This reminds me a lot of directory-based search engines from the 1990s. It also reminds me that retail physical space is not yet smart enough to help me explore something in a less linear and more spontaneous and fun fashion."
 
Conventional wayfinding directories: they don't know who you are
 
To help people navigate retail stores, shopping malls and other large venues, Ng pointed out that the in-store digital navigation tool that is used most often today – electronic directories – do little more than duplicate the printed building directories they replaced.
 
"They (the electronic directories) are one-size-fits-all," Ng said. "They install five screens, but the screens all say the same thing and display everything possible … The directory doesn't know who I am nor help me explore more easily."
 
Those screens need to be made more personal so that they can display more appropriate information about their respective areas, Ng says. To fix this problem, he suggests emulating the Netflix or Amazon model — where the website recognizes the online shopper and makes recommendations based on the pattern of his previous "stops" on the site — inside the store.
 
Ng says the interactive on-screen features of The Glass Infrastructure such as "I'm Interested" and "More Like This" just scratch the surface of this personalized interactivity, in which a specific visitor to a public space is recognized electronically and the media network makes recommendations to that visitor.
 
However, as retailers leverage their loyalty card data and transaction data to provide consumers with opt-in choices, Ng says that is when networks like The Glass Infrastructure will take digital screen media to the next level at retail.
 
Bill Collins is principal of DecisionPoint Media Insights, which produces custom audience research for digital signage networks and digital place-based advertising. (Photo courtesy of Chaki Ng.)