When Adobe's new Customer Experience Center (CEC) was envisioned the Adobe@Adobe team pitched an interactive Internet of Things (IoT) experience. Information displays are great at displaying relevant information - but relevant to whom? The problem is that the information needs to be so generic it may not be useful. We built a personalized customer experience to showcase how screens can interact with IoT devices to deliver context-aware information.
As brands begin to deliver interactive and context-aware experiences, IoT is going to play a larger role in the delivery of those experiences.
When we were thinking about delivering a personalized experience we explored how personal we should get. There is a fine balance, especially for a large screen, to present context relevant information to a customer or group of customers. This is, generally, the creepy effect. We initially envisioned delivering a super creepy experience that showed customers just how much information we could display about them - Twitter feeds, company information, LinkedIn posts, etc. Not wanting to scare people we built a more subtle experience that embodies the IoT experience.
Our lead computer scientist, David Benge, had built a proof of concept system using RFID cards for Adobe's tech summit. We learned a lot about radio frequency and how the environment plays a role in whether it works or not. For this experience Dave looked to leverage Bluetooth (BTLE) beacons instead of RFID. BTLE worked well.
Dave and Mark Ellis, Sr Computer Scientist, built a personalized experience where a BTLE beacon on the customer's visitor badge detects their industry. Then Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) loads content showing the success other customers in that industry are having with Adobe. The experience is initially touch free - once a beacon is detected. There is also a touch experience where customers are free to explore other industries from a menu on the bottom. Another touch feature is the ability to swipe through content being displayed.
This solution shows how brands can leverage screens to augment their content strategy, effectively bringing online content into the showroom or store. This solution brings all the powerful features of AEM into a large format display - easy editing, timed release of content, and now the ability to integrate with IoT devices or mobile phones to deliver a seamless connected experience.
The 'Screen Saver' state is a 30 second video on a seamless loop that rotates through the various Adobe cloud Icons (Creative, Marketing, and Document ) the experience stays in this state until a BTLE Beacon is detected or when a user touches the display.
Each BTLE Beacon has an ID embeded in them that corresponds to a specific vertical. When the experience detects a beacon, it loads customer success stories in the corresponding vertical. The content then slowly rotates between Creative, Marketting, and Document clouds to show how the cloud solutions are being leveraged.
Users are not restricted from browsing content from other verticals either. All of the verticals listed at the bottom are also touch enabled, allowing users to see how others are achieving success using the various Adobe solutions.
This project was created to show customers how they can use beacons or any Bluetooth enabled device to extend an experience beyond touch and into contextual.
There are two main states to the project, a 'Screen Saver' state and an 'Interactive' state. The 'Screen Saver' state is shown in Image 1.
This is how the finished product looks, embeded in the wall and running on an 84 inch touch screen display.
Customers to our experience center walk by this 84" 4K screen with a bluetooth beacon on their badges that detects their industry. Once detected the screen moves from the screen saver mode to showing customer stories. It then rotates between stories from each Adobe cloud in turn to show the breadth of solutions across a variety of customers.
Customers are not restricted from browsing content from other industries. They can switch from a list at the bottom using touch to see how other brands are building success with Adobe.
