For CES 2016, Microsoft and The Michael Alan Group engaged Future Colossal to construct an immersive experience that would show their biggest retail clients how they're rethinking retail strategy to “empower buying." We engaged their clients with a human-centric digital touch wall and augmented reality product table made the experience informative and entertaining.
The Michael Alan Group
BrandMicrosoft
Design, Development, Experiential Design Consultant
The Microsoft Retail Experience Center took VIP attendees on a journey through today’s retail landscape, exploring the industry's merger of physical and digital interfaces with a 20’ interactive touch wall and an augmented reality display table.
To achieve a digital project with a distinctively human touch, we paired Microsoft’s retail sales assets with playful hand-drawn illustrations and animations. Between the Wall and the AR Table, 40 of Microsoft’s assets were incorporated into the experience with over 60 hand-rendered animations.
Attendees explored Microsoft’s offerings by touching one of the bright, colorful illustrations on the screen to trigger a corresponding animation sequence. The interactive hand-drawn animation's distinct aesthetic set Microsoft's experience apart from the rest of CES.
To discover Microsoft’s display table options, attendees directed our augmented reality viewer over an illustration of a retail store floor plan, hovering over product logos to view their hero display. By moving the viewer closer, attendees could explore display details, with the ability to zoom into individual product tags. As attendees viewed each object, four 4k displays above the table showcased corresponding options. The hand-drawn aesthetic was consistent across all displays, each item manifesting as a line drawing before transforming into a photo-realistic rendering.
The complete experience allowed Microsoft to show off 30 display options in a compact and portable space, as opposed to their large Retail Experience Center in Redmond, WA. Many retailers that experienced our interactive environment requested to have a similar set-ups recreated in-store.
