Brief | Retail Therapy 08
Project Leader | Massimo Banzi
Project Assistants | Renzo Giusti & Sigrid Wiederhecker
Group Members |  Giorgio Partesana, Su Rim Kim, Trusha Sawant

Some people like to go shopping while some others do it when they really need to. The project Surprise tries to enhance the experience of shopping for both categories adding some funny surprises, mainly around the fitting room area. For the first this add-on for the showroom could shift and renew their usual experience while for the second it could be a way to make shopping more pleasant.

The system is based on a number of interactive media that are triggered by people’s natural actions, without adding any artificial action layer. These media (short clips, voices, lighting messages) are integrated into to showroom architecture in order to be hid, just appearing when they are meant to be visible to produce the surprise.

The type of surprises that the project proposes are in line with the spirit of the brand and with the target. So medias balance between embarrassing, sexy and spicy content, anytime keeping a tangible sense of humor. These surprising events are also meant to be a pretext for socializing between customers.

How it works

Depending on the actions of the customer, and on which items he/she’s interested in, the system will trigger a specific media.

The sensing is done with three technologies, RFID tags/reader for the items, Video tracking for the movements in the fitting room, IR telemeter for the door.

The surprises are manifested by some devices dissembled in the architecture of the showroom. A video projection for the humans figures, speaker for the sounds effects and the vocal comments, light bulbs around the mirror for the lighting effects.

The following schema illustrates how the customers behaviors is detected to trigger the respective surprise.

Value and Potentials

Since the system senses and reacts to natural actions, people don’t need to do specific actions and don’t need to spend more time then a normal shopping session would require.

Since the taste of the surprises is slightly embarrassing and ironic, they can be a pretext of socialization.

The idea of creating surprising effects could be extended to the entire showroom

Visual or audio events could be used to provide feedback on the chosen items.