The New Wave of Digital Media Experience
Pioneering Korean design company d’strict on how to connect digital media tech with offline stores.
Experience is the buzzword of the moment for retailers. The relationship between offline spaces and digital media technology plays a particularly crucial role in creating experiences that put the customer first. d’strict is one company that´s already nailing the art of creating stunning experiences: Their most recent creation, “Wave”, is the world’s largest anamorphic illusion — the stunning installation in Seoul’s Gangnam-gu neighborhood left passersby speechless and quickly went viral across the world.
We sat down with d’strict’s CEO Sean Lee to chat about the future of space-based experience design, the role of social media in promoting these experiences, and the transformation of retail stores into digital media spaces. Sean also revealed what inspires him personally, and highlighted the importance of sight stimulation when designing experiences.
Sean, what does experience mean in 2020?
While the standard dictionary definition of “experience” may not change, its meaning evolves over time. In the context of technological advancement, this is especially true. The “experience” we design primarily aims to create a holistic involvement of thoughts and emotions in a specific space. From the moment of entering the space to leaving it, users are stimulated to judge many components of the service and the environment at various points, including the aesthetic impression, utility and convenience of the given space. Such emotions and thoughts assemble from different points of contact to build the “experience”, which is constantly evolving through digital media technology. The meaning of “experience” in 2020 can be defined as a technological accumulation of new mental and physical responses that people have not been able to feel or experience before. Technology allows us to provide vastly more immersive experiences of emotions and thoughts than before, under the same spatial conditions. It sometimes even provides people with emotions and thoughts that couldn’t possibly be designed or offered to them otherwise. It seems that a new era has arrived, one where it’s impossible to design an effective “experience” without a proper understanding of the technology.
Why are visual-driven experiences so important for brands and retailers right now?
We live in an era where we can easily and rapidly encounter an unprecedented amount of content through diverse media. A lot of brands are increasingly producing more stimulating content to market their products and services to consumers. So to stand out, we need a strategic model that can create attractive content in a short amount of time.
We believe that “sight” is the most primary and instinctive sense. Whatever the content may be, we first tend to use our “sight” to perceive it and decide whether it´s worth spending more time on.
To stimulate people amid the endless flow of content and engage in a long conversation, it is essential to raise the level of interest through “sight”. That’s why visual-driven experiences are so important and effective.
How can companies enhance their experiential offerings to optimize the shareability of social media content?
Mobile outperforms desktop as the primary source of social media content consumption, and this has been the case for some time. For effective brand experience design, it’s important to connect the communication from social media to the experiences people get from offline spaces like retail shops. Social media inevitably has some limitations to providing a memorable experience because of its mobile environment. As a result, it’s crucial to provide meaningful experiences in offline spaces and use social media to expose the space to the public. For example, we could utilize offline stores to offer experiences directly related to the brand’s identity or the strength of their services while sharing photos or videos of such experiences on social media.
How important is interaction and participation in brand-based experiences, and why?
Brand experience design nowadays focuses on effectively expanding the offline space experience into an online platform. A lot of interactive contents are being utilized to make offline space experiences richer and more impressive.
It’s quite difficult to successfully engage with customers when they’re only exposed unilaterally to photos or videos that are constantly being played in a retail store. Such a setup would not lead any customers to share their brand experience online. Subsequently, a lot of brand businesses use digital media technology in retail stores to promote interaction with the customers and offer rich experiences that can be shared online. It is also very useful in that effective interaction design can obtain data about potential customers online, thereby engaging them in an ongoing and long-term conversation.
What is the role of digital in experience today, and how does/should it intersect with the physical sphere?
“Digital”, and “digital media technology” especially, is becoming a vital component of experience design. Digital media technology has become a way of offering new, realistic experiences that couldn’t be done in analog-based retail environments. Whether through a sensational video or augmented reality content on a holographic display, retail store customers are able to experience the brand and service thoroughly. In this way we can bring way more effective and vivid brand experiences to customers compared to traditional printed images or texts.
Additionally, technological advancement will drive the transformation of retail stores into digital media spaces. Many are already utilizing transparent displays to showcase diverse content instead of the traditional windows. As more and more communication tools are introduced to enhance connections between the product/services and customers, there will be a gradual growth of digital media installations in retail stores as an interior component. The way digital media is melted into the store will not be heterogeneous but installed more sensibly into the physical space compared to analog-based interiors of traditional stores.
Where do you find inspiration: Which artists, studios, designers and innovators are really pushing the boundaries?
We are living in a world of numerous technologies and services pouring hourly onto us. We put a great amount of effort into observing and researching products from many artists, studios, designers and innovators as we create content based on technologies used for commercial purposes. However, our productions are inspired by our own interests in “human” rather than from other published productions. We believe that the core of user experience design lies with finding an answer to what “humans” really like. After all, our design of user experience is a collection of emotions and thoughts that offer satisfaction to people. So we must always observe and think about what “humans” like in general. These observations and contemplations give us inspiration, which we incorporate into our content.
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