A Tour of Echangeur

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The French innovation centre that could show us the future.
 
There are a number of new technologies currently emerging that will have an enormous impact on future customer experience, particularly as an extension of already widely-adopted interactive self-service and digital signage channels.
 
At Echangeur, the focus is not on how the technology works, but on how the user experiences the application, which is why the technologies are demonstrated here as if they were in the real world, with real-life applications. Echangeur looks at the technologies of the future and examines why they are not yet in common use, examining the challenges that need to be overcome before they can be used in the real world.
 
There are six Echangeurs across France, with Echangeur SME based in central Paris. Since it was first opened in 1997, Echangeur has welcomed 100,000 visitors and 10,000 companies. It was set up in 1997 by LaSer, a European leader in intermediation services and customer relations, and is held jointly by BNP Paribas Personal Finance and the Galeries Lafayette Group, as well as being supported by the European Commission.
 
With an increasing proliferation of customer information channels and contact points, companies from a variety of vertical markets such as retail, finance and public services are faced with the challenge of how to adapt their strategies for new customer interaction contexts. Echangeur offers business managers demonstrations dedicated to the innovative in-store applications of the very latest technologies in the field of customer relations. Companies can find out how the deployment of communication and information technologies can be used as tools to improve their performance and gain competitive advantages.
 
Grand Gestures
One of the first installations one encounters on entering the Paris premises is based around digital signage which, rather than being interacted with using touch technologies, relies on gestures to manipulate the information and activity on screen. The scenario posited here is of an interactive shop window, which customers can interact with by moving their hands in front of the screen rather than by touching the screen directly, thus staying in contact with the brand even when the store is closed.
 
The solution is composed of a video-based movement tracking system, computer, beamer and transparent screen. The cameras of the tracking system detect the hand movements at a distance and send their location to the computer, which then processes the data and sends the information to be projected on the surface to the beamer.
 
The reservations with this solution is that, for the most part, people are not yet used to interacting with technology in this way; while most people are now familiar with touch-controlled interfaces, they are not used to interacting without any actual contact occurring. However, with more and more games incorporating gesture-controlled actions (such as the Nintendo Wii), gesture-based commands should become increasingly familiar in the near future. The focus here is on making gesture interactivity intuitive so that actions – like increasing the size of an image by moving your hands apart – can be performed without prior knowledge or training.
 
The challenge for brands will be to redesign content for this, because they will have to re-imagine how their brand can be represented in non-touch interactive multimedia. Over the next year, Echangeur expects this kind of interactivity to become more common in store windows.
 
Hands On Approach
 
Another application showcased at Echangeur consists of an interactive counter top in a bar, where placing your drink on the table brings up information on your drink that you can then browse and manipulate with your fingers. So, if you were drinking a particular kind of coffee, you could get information on its origin and taste as you were drinking it. As suits an application designed for a social setting, it is multi-user, so users can compare their drinks simply by placing them side by side.
 
One surprising thing about this solution is that it does not rely on RFID technology. Rather, simple image recognition is used to identify a logo on the bottom of the glass, so that information is provided to match each drink. When an object is placed on the tabletop, the tracking system recognises it by a visual tracking tag on the base of the product. At the same time, the tracking system detects the positions and movements of the users’ fingers and the objects.
Another multi-touch interactive surface was shown where users can simultaneously interact using touch. This kind of interface has numerous applications, such as a conference tool for sharing documents virtually or as a digital catalogue in store.
 
Although multi-touch is a very impressive technology, the different movements that perform different commands (such as placing ten fingers on the surface producing a keyboard) still need to be widely adopted and defined in order to make less intuitive actions possible.
 
On the Line
 
The mobile phone has become a modern day ‘Swiss Army knife’, facilitating new and varied customer interactions on the move. A mobile can be a credit card, loyalty card, electronic coupon or voucher, shopping list, interactive store map or even a bar code scanner.

Near Field Communication (NFC) can be used to download multimedia content, coupons or product information directly to a phone from a kiosk terminal by tapping a contact point. A lot of activity on setting standards for NFC is underway in France; the French government wants 30% of mobile phones to have NFC capacity by 2011. NFC-enabled mobile phones can be used to download a coupon to be redeemed at checkout, as well as participate in loyalty programmes and even make payments with their mobile at a kiosk.
 
Software can turn mobile phones into Personal Shopping Assistants, so customers can receive information and special offers about products on their phone, as well as scan 2D codes on packaging to download information on this product or add it to a shopping list for checkout. An interactive map of the store can also enable customers to find the product they want much more quickly.
 
For Echangeur, mobile applications are one of the most exciting developments for the future. It remains to be seen, though, whether the brand or the proprietor will provide the content, and who will provide the application. Standards are being actively discussed in France and are central to further development of this technology.
 
For companies, the mobile presents another element in a multi-channel approach, and a new means of marketing to their customers to enable interactions with brands to occur in-store at the crucial point of decision or purchase, as well as being a means of gaining better customer knowledge.

Larger than Life
 
L’Echangeur believe that augmented reality will be the next big thing in marketing, because of its ability to bring a brochure or a ‘product in a box’ to life. A camera can be used to recognise the object, and then a 3D representation of the product is produced in real-time. Customers can interact with the object and examine it from different angles.
 
Augmented reality, Echangeur also believes, will become part of mobile interactivity, such as making digital signage advertising more interactive through augmented reality brochures and catalogues, which are shown when the mobile phone camera is used to take an image of the advertisement.
 
3D content is one way to improve the dramatic impact of content on a digital sign and gain the audience’s attention, as this is still a very new technology. L’Echangeur shows a 3D screen which does not require glasses, and where 3D content can be viewed from 180 degrees. Eight interleaved images are used to produce the auto-stereoscopic 3D effect.
 
One of the main problems with incorporating 3D technology into digital signage is that the content creation is more complicated and more expensive. However, 3D screens do hold the audience’s attention for longer, so the message can be delivered more successfully.

Smell of Success
 
Humans are highly influenced by smell, but it is a sense not often appealed to in marketing, partly because it is difficult to segregate smells in an area. Using a kiosk, the scent can be far more accurately controlled and the effects more subtle. The applications L’Echangeur show here include content advertising a perfume that contained smells of the sea: the content began with raw smells and video content of the sea and culminated in a shot of the perfume bottle itself and the perfume’s scent.
 
Another application included user-selected cooking instructions for a meal, where various scents of the ingredients were exuded, finishing with the overall smell of the whole dish. An Italian retailer who used such a kiosk to advertise ingredients and recipes found that sales of these ingredients increased by 15%.

Facing the Feedback
 
Using a simple camera placed either in a kiosk or on a digital sign, companies can more accurately target their customers by selecting content in real-time to match the profile of their audience. No images are recorded, but video analysis algorithms are used to assess the audience and select content that is most relevant or appropriate to them. Each face is associated with an attention time and various demographic attitudes (like gender or age), so that content can then be delivered depending on the profile of the current audience.
 
L’Echangeur is studying developments in this kind of technology that will mean that the emotion of the audience can also be determined, by measuring a number of parameters, including how open the eyes are, how dilated the pupils and eyebrow and forehead position, etc. Programmes which analyse customers’ feelings and emotions are a good method by which consumer reactions can be gauged.
 
By putting all these technologies together in real-life situations, Echangeur provides a well-needed platform to encourage business managers to devise new strategies for the future, by opening their eyes to the possibilites new advances will continue to offer us. I would certainly recommend a visit to anyone involved in the arena of customer service technology.