This award-winning interactive experience brings a 21st century engagement layer to one of our national treasures. With over 50 touch screen activities, a pre/post and standalone web experience, a bookmarking feature called myLOC, an ARG type adventure game and a 16 foot interactive wall, this experience has interactivity turned up to 11.

At a fundamental level, most of the activities are Linear and Immersive experiences that allow visitors an increased ability to explorer architecture, literature, art and other artifacts that are normally not accessible. Through the use of high quality digital photography and classic UI techniques such as hotspot navigation, zoom in/out, pan, 3d rotate and page turning, visitors can gain a deeper understandign of rare documents.  Second Story does a nice job creating a visually pleasing interface that is also robust enough to serve up heaps of content with rich media functionality.

Another element of the experience that I find effective as a starter engagement is the large Immersive projection wall that allows visitors to gain a glimpse of the content while increasing their curiosity. The wall is interactive and subtlety reacts to the visitors’ motions via IR, revealing historic document content.

There are several decisions that were made during the creation of this exhibition that I’d like to applaud. First is the use of large 32-inch 16:9 touch screens as the standard display, which is a perfect form factor for this visually rich content.  Second is the creation of myLOC  (a bar-coded passport  system that allows visitor to bookmark content for later retrieval on the web), this is something we have done in the past and feel is a natural connection between the web experiences and in-gallery experiences.  Third is the inclusion of an adventure Q&A game called Knowledge Quest, which is a junior version of an ARG where visitors are asked questions pertaining to the information available within the gallery. As visitors explorer the gallery and find their answers, rewards are unlocked based on progress.

Schematic, a large award winning-interactive agency,  worked to create the website versions of the activities so visitor can experience the content and interactives entirely from home. This is not normally part of an exhibition’s focus because often the venue feels it reduces the need to visit the physical gallery. I appreciate this decision by the LOC to open up their content (and the actual interactives) in a way that elevates the web more on par with the gallery.  Final note…nice use of Sliverlight!

Kraft has not only succeeded in this, but has possibly taken it to the next level with their branded iPhone app called iFood Assistant. In the enormous universe of iPhone apps, iFood Assistant has gained a lot of popularity. It’s the 2nd most popular application in the lifestyle category and among the top 100 paid apps. That’s right — iFood Assistant costs money. Despite the fact that it’s a heavily branded experience, Kraft has succeeded in getting lots of people to pay 99 cents for it. That’s because it’s useful so people are willing to pay for it. And they’re also willing to tolerate the advertising that’s ubiquitous within the app. 

But there’s more. Some of the useful features of the app include recipes, and the ability to build shopping lists from these recipes. And the ability to find stores nearby to shop for these items. And even, in some cases, what aisles to find those items in within the store. Now I’m sure you won’t be surprised to hear that Kraft products are heavily featured in these recipes and shopping lists. So in addition to immersion in the brand, it drives you to an actual sale. That’s some serious marketing. 

So let’s recap the benefits here for Kraft:

1. They generate revenue by charging for the application
2. They create a new channel for brand advertising within the app
3. They can provide ideas to customers of new ways to use Kraft products, fostering cross-selling
4. They strengthen their relationship with existing customers by providing utility
5. They drive customers directly to directly to buy more Kraft products right now

What I love about this especially is that they are able to leverage the pervasiveness of mobile technology to take what’s essentially a brand marketing campaign and cross the line into the sort of direct response results that have made Google so successful.  It’s hard not to think that the future of engagement marketing like this is bright.

The process starts at the Subway Now website, where customers register and can save their preferences, including credit card info if they want to skip lines entirely when picking up. You set the location closest to you, and also set up your favorite sandwiches. Once all this profile information has been stored, a text of “menu” to Subway’s short code will result in a personalized menu where your stored selections are assigned numbers. Reply with the number that you want to order and you’ll get a confirmation with a pickup time.

This is exactly what we love to see – the melding of utility and brand immersion. We hope to see this program expand and be mimicked by other brands. Of course you can also order online. Subway’s SMS system is powered by New York based GoMobo.

The UK theme park, Alton Towers has a premium serviced called Your Day www.yourday.biz that allows visitors to purchase an RFID wrist band transmitter  that is used to identify themselves throughout the park. When a visitor joins a ride an RFID antennae which reads their wrist band signal captures their unique identifier communicating with a database. While visitors are on the ride strategically mounted video cameras capture slow motion footage at the precise time they pass by.

Here is an example of the clips captured. They integrate stock footage clips with unique visitor clips to create a professional feeling peice. Each of the visitor digital clips are approximately 10 seconds in length and are stored on a central server. Upon exiting, visitors have a choice of take away options as their souvenir.

 I believe computer controlled digitally captured stills and video are going to increase in popularity within various entertainment and cultural venues. Since digital video and still cameras are integrated into our cell phones and hence carried with us everyday people are getting addicted to taking a tremendous amount of pictures and video. Many of these are of themselves and friends, taken to memorialize daily events and used to post on Facebook and alike. You need a digital pic to “start the conversation” through social networking site.

To provide this service at this scale is not cheap (e.g. 4.5 miles of cable, 130 computers, 36 cameras, 100 RFID antennas). I don’t believe many venues can afford such an investment. I suggest integrating RFIDs into the experience for more than one purpose to help spread out the value proposition and expense. Using them to record a visitor’s bookmarked content within their exploration and learning or creating a personalized set of content as a “lens” for each visitor based on their demographics and interests are all possible through the use of RFIDs. Incorporating these elements into the functionality of an RFID system provides visitors immediate benefits to improve their experience the day of as well as a memento after they have left.