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David Kepron

Brain Food: Shopping on the Holodeck

3-D virtual shopping will boldly go where no shopper has gone before

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When digital technologies first entered the customer-experience journey, they were mostly found as freestanding kiosks and wall-mounted plasma screens. Retail stores implemented them as a means to animate the shopping trip, but they often served as nothing more than digital wayfinding devices. Over the past decade, technology has taken a quantum leap forward, yet store environments lag behind. Even with screens abound, they still seldom fulfill their promise of augmenting the customer experience journey in a way that is relevant.

With regard to technology that has shaped the experience of the retail place in terms of its architecture, few revolutionary steps have been taken despite the speed with which technology is advancing. Today, the in-store kiosks are fewer, but wall-mounted video monitors, with endless video loops or social media feeds, have become bigger. They now cover entire walls, utilizing several synchronized screens. 

Over the next few years, shoppers will begin to shed the cumbersome cognitive processes of cost comparisons, curating the assortment into segments that are easier to shop, and understanding the details of product specifications. Retailers will enlist sophisticated number crunching algorithms to sort through Big Data, helping to make decision-making at the point-of-sale easier by customizing the shopping trip after mining shoppers’ digital life streams.

Retailers and brands will need to continue to focus their efforts on creating environments that engage the customer with real-time personalized downloads, augmented reality games in both real and virtual spaces, and immersive experiences through multiple touchpoints using traditional media, smartphones and smart ubiquitous computing – all at the same time.

Technology that is part of the process of shopping, something that customers engage as part of the experience leading to a purchase, will enlist the shopper’s body and mind in creating positive experiences. In future stores, today’s digital wallpaper will be replaced by an interactive digital environment that is relevant because customers will actively participate in its making.

When I was growing up, the original “Star Trek” TV show introduced me to the idea that in the unimaginably vast universe, our little blue ball is but a speck. It would take the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” series to imagine that the worlds we inhabit could be digitally created in real time.

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When the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise (Class D) were cruising the universe and couldn’t make time for shore-leave, they really needed something like the “holodeck.” This 3-D virtual environment, inspired by New York inventor and holographer, Gene Dolgoff, was a virtual reality wonderland in which “Star Trek: The Next Generation” characters could physically walk through fantastically imaginative, virtually created experiences.

The holodeck was good science fiction and a very real possibility. When the concept was created for the show about 29 years ago, this 3-D holographic environment was delightful entertainment and considered something of the distant future. Today, many companies are working on holodeck-like rooms and technologists believe that machines able to be called “holodecks” could be only about 10 to 15 years away.

A key feature of the holodeck was the ability of the user to determine the nature of the experience. The virtual playground could be operated in two modes: a first-person subjective mode, in which the user actively interacted with the program and its characters; and third-person objective mode, in which the user remained outside the actual running of the program and did not directly interact with it.

While we can, through gaming, enter other worlds and inhabit alternate realities, and even take on alternate personalities, we are still doing so through an interface that sits on your desktop, in your lap or the palm of your hand. Even though these virtual environments are compelling, the screen, despite even the highest resolution and size, just isn’t the same thing as actually standing inside the scene.

Although virtual reality headsets such as the Oculus Rift are able to provide wearers with compelling virtual environments, wide fields of view and ultra-low latency head tracking, people who use them are still hardwired to their computers. According to Erik Kain of Forbes (“Intel Just Revealed a Wireless Virtual Reality Headset,” August 16, 2016), Intel’s newly announced “Project Alloy” headset does away with all that. It’s untethered, with its PC stored in the headset itself.”

Since getting rid of the “leash” is a significant hurdle for VR to go mainstream, this will be a game changer allowing truly ambulatory gameplay and movement through a virtual space. What’s more, Intel’s “Project Alloy” claims to provide “mixed-reality” capabilities, integrating the real world around you with 3-D virtual constructions. These sort of hybrid realities are a significant step to digitally integrated environments, since true VR environments still seem to make people nauseated.

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It now appears we are also on our way to dealing with the VR nausea challenge. According to Bernard Marr of Forbes (“10 Potentially Game-Changing Wearable Technology Innovations,” March 24, 2016), Samsung has developed a novel solution with its 4-D “Entrim” headphones. The headset uses a “method known as Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation to trick the body’s vestibule system, located in the ear, into thinking it is actually experiencing motion.” With the VR motion sickness problem potentially solved, we are moving towards digitally immersive environments where brain and body experiences are not in contradiction to each other.

The brilliance of the holodeck was that it could be a world of your own creation. And then you occupied it with your mind and body. Whether you manufactured a virtual world from your imagination or chose from a preset number of options, you were integrally involved in defining the nature of the experience. The individual established the parameters of the interaction, and, in doing so, it was relevant and engaging.

The holodeck was not technology in an environment; it was the environment.

As we become better at collecting data and using it to define in-store experiences, we will find that customers will be able to interact with shopping places in real-time, changing parameters of the spaces they are in. The customizability of in-store shopping experiences will become increasingly popular. The ability for customers to create the environments they shop in – laying out the store in a way that is intuitive for them to navigate, playing the music they like, providing shopping assistants (virtual or real) who are created to meet a shopper’s personality type, and curating the assortment to the individual shopper’s needs – will be possible in future shopping places where technology merges with the customer’s imaginative brain and their digital life story.

Personalized experience and exercising the free will to go where you want in a shopping environment are key features of empowering a customer. This is where virtual reality and high-resolution, computer-generated imagery come in to play.

Big data gives the creators of shopping places the ability to understand customers’ motivations in a more granular way than we have been able to understand in the past. In the future, retailers and brands will get even better at predicting their customers’ needs and desires, as well as delivering environments that allow for customization of the assortment and the environment in which it is housed.

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The holodeck of shopping experiences will be best when it runs in subjective mode, where shoppers create and directly interact with their surroundings. These shopping places of the future will engage shoppers in right-brain imagination. They will not be one-size-fits-all experiences, but rather, smart interactive playgrounds that directly addresses our deep need for play, relationships and creating, which are founding elements of our collective evolutionary past.

Don't miss David Kepron's session at VMSD's International Retail Design Conference (IRDC), Sept. 13-15, in Montreal. His general session presentation, “To Boldly Go: How Marriott is Teleporting Guests Into Next-Gen Customer Experiences,” taking place Wednesday, September 14 at 1:30 p.m., will focus on the advances in digital environments and virtual reality, and how retailers can use this technology to provide their customers with novel, unique experiences. For more information about his session and others, visit irdconline.com.

David Kepron is Vice President – Global Design Strategies with Marriott International. His focus is on the creation of compelling customer experiences within a unique group of Marriott brands called the “Lifestyle Collection,” including Autograph, Renaissance and Moxy hotels. As a frequently requested speaker to retailers, hoteliers and design professionals nationally and internationally, David shares his expertise on subjects ranging from consumer behaviors and trends, brain science and buying behavior, store design and visual merchandising as well as creativity and innovation. David is also author of Retail (r)Evolution: Why Creating Right-Brain Stores will Shape the Future of Shopping in a Digitally Driven World,” published by ST Media Group Intl. and available online from ST Books. @davidkepron; www.retail-r-evolution.com.

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