Ex 3

I felt that in order to design a retail store I had to understand how consumers think. So I did some research into consumer psychology .

I came across an online book forgot the title, but I'll post that later, that made some good points into what makes a successful online retail store. Apparently it is online retail stores that have a community that does the best. These retail stores provide forums, customer / editor reviews, and areas where the consumers can converse with one another.

Some facts:

Online communities are among the most trafficked websites. 6 out of the 20 most visited sites are community based. (i.e Second life, Amazon...)

One-third of visitors to e-commerce sites used community features. Two-thirds of all purchases made at online retail stores are from these people.

I realized that in order for an online retail store or even a physical store to succeed they need to have some basis of community. People don't simply buy a product they buy the product for the experience it can offer.

If interaction in the online virtual store is so vital for its success, why is it that in the physical store there is so little interaction among the consumers? How would you get the consumers to interact with one another? This is where architecture comes into play whether it may be to convince or force consumers to interact with one another.

How does the architecture do that?

I've come to the conclusion that you can't really force people to interact with one another. You can only convince them.

Hillier said that "human behavior has its own spatial forms-encountering, congregating, avoiding, interacting, dwelling, teaching..." Basically the activities that people do has their own spatial patterns.

To visualize how these interactions create spatial patterns I did the following






This is a stab at how the virtual store would look like. Looks like a molecule. This is exactly how I envisioned the virtual space. Clusters, little solar systems, where consumers are densely packed around the communal areas.



This is an application available at sodaplay.com. You can play with the application. Change mass, polarity, how many balls there are and so on. Its doesn't represent exactly how I envisioned how my virtual store would be, but it sort of gets the point across.

So I have an idea of how my virtual store looks, but how am I going to relate this to my physical store. How is it going to determine how the consumers interact within the store.

Having had come to the conclusion that I can't force the consumers to interact with one another I decided against having the store be kinematic. Instead I opted to try and immerse them in the community rich world on the web. So my store would be an area where there are a series of projectors projecting in real time the online community. Upon your entering the store you are also given a virtual identity which participates within the virtual world as you choose to do in the real world. Also in an effort to try and convince the consumers to interact with one another the floor will have sensors which will track your movement and those of others in the store. Paths will light up leading to different departments of the store as well as other consumers within their proximity. The information being tracked within the store will be projected on to the facade of the building.

Case study of interactive space

In efforts to get out of slumping sales and an ever shrinking population of loyal shoppers J.C Penny has opted to try a new method of reaching out to the consumers. They have adopted the strategy of "pop up" stores where a temporary store is created in a high profile high traffic area in order to showcase their newest products.

The "temporary physical virtual store" opened from between March 2-26 in a vacant building in One Times Square.

There have been other "pop up" stores, but the thing that separates this from other similar stores is that this temporary store actually does not carry any merchandise. It is basically a showcase for their newest brand items. Its basically an exhibit where you walk around and view the items that are on display. The interactive aspect of this store is that there are 22 kiosks at various locations in the store that allow consumers to buy the items that they are presently
viewing. There are no fancy lights or mechanical elements that creates a dialog with the shoppers however you can see how the marketing team at JCPenney has made an effort to somehow tie in their enormous virtual store with a physical store.

The store isn't very interesting in architectural terms.

Although the case study wasn't to interesting it did turn me in a new direction, exhibits. The temporary JCPenney had the feel of a really boring exhibit. The only difference is that you could buy the items that were on display on the spot.

So for my second case study I looked at some exhibits. I came across the Sony exhibit designed by Design Company Agentur from the IFA trade fair 2005. In this exhibit, Sony made every effort to encourage consumer interaction with their product by having absolutely no staff within the exhibit. They wanted this to be a personal experience between their customers and their products. To completely immerse the consumers into experiencing their products they focused their efforts on making the display highly entertaining and interactive.

Viewing from the outside of the display the exhibit looks entirely closed off by dark banners.Upon entering the exhibit you are greeted by these vertical displays and music.
The visitor is free to move around the exhibit and try all the new gadgets at their own pace. With staff not present visitors are forced/encouraged to explore and test how the new products work making it a more personal experience. This idea of allowing the consumer to interact with the product freely without having a staff member watching over their shoulders makes sense. I hate listening to how much these punks know about the product. I like figuring out things on my own. Its just more fun that way.

The exhibit had areas where you can have an even more personal experience with the Sony product such as in these sound tubes.



Here they can download from Sony's Connect, a music downloading site much like iTunes, and listen to them in their own private sound tubes.

From these case studies I imagined a store completely free of employees. Where the only interaction occurring is between the consumers and the products and on occasion between consumers and consumers. All products inside can be tested, explored, experienced and can also be purchased online on easy to use kiosks.

references:
http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2006/id20060214_171142.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2006-03-02-penney-cover-usat_x.htm

Animation of 3d model

This is an animation of of the 3d model I created with my 2d pattern. I wasn't able to get it to do what I wanted it to do as part of a group. As an individual you can see how each leg is able to move independently.

Rubber band exercise

This is the rubber band exercise that we did. My animation shows how the spaces and hallways bulge as people move through them. The squares are the spaces and the line connecting them are the hallways.

2d and 3d patterns

For the first exercise we were required to get 6 images. Two images from nature, technology, and from a film. We were then supposed to use techniques to transform these pictures into our own patterns. So by overlaying, mirroring, cropping, and repeating these steps over again we were expected to create 2d patterns. I did these steps over and created several patterns that were to complicated and I simply was not happy with. After several attempts and not being completely satisfied and time running out I decided to do something incredibly simple. I took a single image of an AK47 cropped the barrel and turned that into the pattern that you can see bellow.

It looks incredibly simple. But when creating this pattern I kind of viewed this as a mechanical entity with arms that could move independently. It actually fits into my original concept of "a part to a whole" from my 2d transformation. I saw a pattern as simply a singular unit repeated over and over. I was interested in how a simple thing could create something that looks far more complicated when multiplied. Cells by themselves accomplish rather simple tasks but when combined they can complete more complicated tasks and create complicated structures. My project has to do with how a smaller entity creates a greater more complicated entity.

These are images of the 3d models that I created from the 2d pattern. I extruded the image in plan then used the intersection tool in Rhino to create this model.