Tags: RFID

Digital Retail Signage Solutions Come of Age with Additional Technology Capabilities

Posted by Justin Miller on Posted in Biometrics Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

When was the last time you went to a retail store and had a great experience? No, I don’t mean customer service or super cool music in the dressing rooms. When was the last time that you went into a retail store and had a memorable experience that made you smile, or gave you more information about a product or service in real time than you might have gleaned online?

Retailers in particular have become more intrigued with digital signage over the last decade. The shift to digital meant that organizations could change their pricing, menus, or other details in real time, without needing to change out physical signage. Today, three types of digital signage are typically used in customer-facing environments.

Passive Signage

Passive signage is what you would encounter at a fast food restaurant at the airport. This type of digital signage is typically displayed on one or more screens, and either remains static all the time or changes at set intervals, such as a digital menu board that switches over at noon. Passive signage can be hosted on a local machine or over the Internet, and it’s generally more cost effective than running print jobs every time your business wants to make a change. It’s very utilitarian. However, it lacks the interactive element that really draws people in.

Interactive Signage

Interactive signage takes many forms, and is generally designed to provide a level of user interaction by being “triggered” by an event. Think of an iBeacon that sends a coupon to your mobile phone when you walk into your favorite clothing store or displays information about a painting when you hold your smart phone up next to it at the museum. Another example is signage triggered by sensors – when you lift that bottle of Bordeaux at the wine store, perhaps a light sensor is triggered and you see a map and information about the wine on a screen. Or you hold a piece of clothing up to a mirror in the changing room, and its RFID tag triggers signage behind a translucent mirror suggesting other pieces that may go with the skirt. This type of signage is indeed interactive and can be engaging, but the engagement is not always intuitive and there’s typically only one level of engagement between the individual and the signage.

Intelligent Signage

This brings us to a new type of digital signage. What if there was a way to create compelling in-store experiences in which customers could interact with a truly intuitive digital system, perhaps even order products on-screen, while also feeding interaction data back to the retailer or business owner? It is for this use case that intelligent signage, perhaps today’s most cutting-edge technology in retail and digital advertising, was designed.

One of the most interesting of these new systems is Microsoft’s Inception solution, which uses the Microsoft Kinect sensor to detect an individual’s proximity from the sensor, his/her age and gender (using NEC biometric facial recognition technology), and his/her interaction with products on a shelf. Different distances and interactions can trigger different layers of contextual signage, such as static or video advertisement screens, product pricing, technical specs, user reviews from the web and more. The system also records anonymous data such as the demographics and engagement time of individuals with various products, allowing advertisers and business owners to better understand their audience and the effectiveness of their signage.

Intelligent signage systems use advanced yet inexpensive hardware including the Kinect sensor and lightweight PCs such as those embedded in NEC commercial displays, and they can be combined with sensors in the ceiling (in-store heat mapping) or at a point of sale. This solution gives the business owner a broad understanding of how people traverse a particular store or the ages and genders of customers who are buying which products, at which times of day. Intelligent signage systems introduce analytics for the real world, and it’s going to change the way that we experience in-store retail.

But analytics, particularly analytics using Big Data, require more than an intelligent signage system to provide the analytics that will make them most useful to retail companies. One option is using Azure StreamAnalytics. This new offering from Microsoft provides real-time insight into what products are attracting the attention of shoppers, how product interest varies by age and gender, and which displays are attracting the most attention. Stores will be able to tune the shopping experience to maximize sales. Microsoft Azure StreamAnalytics is a new addition to the company’s Azure IoT (Internet of Things) Suite enabling the retail industry to build and deploy IoT solutions to transform the shopping experience and their business model.

What’s Next

With the digital signage market projected to grow a staggering 65% in 2015 alone, it’s more than likely that intelligent signage and audience measurement systems will be arriving soon at a business near you. Overall intelligent signage could lead not only to greater efficiencies in the retail sector, but also far more interesting in-store experiences for shoppers.

Where Can I Test Drive One of These Systems?

The Inception system will be demonstrated at the upcoming Microsoft Build (April 28 – May 1) and Microsoft Ignite (May 4-8) conferences.

Armchair Quarterbacks Rejoice! Big Data is In the Game!

Posted by Bryan Williams on Posted in Straight Talk Tagged , , , ,

When it comes to football, everyone has a favorite team. The fans not only cheer their hearts out, but they feel as if they are an integral part of their team. Well, now thanks to big data, fans will feel like they are an even bigger part of the game!

Have you ever found yourself yelling at the television, trying desperately to tell the players what their next critical move should be? With the emerging advancements of big data and analytics, armchair quarterbacks will have up-to-date information and statistics at their fingertips. And it’s coming to you this season!

Big Data enters the NFL

Photo by AJ Guel on Flickr and used here with Creative Commons license.

The National Football League (NFL) announced that in-game player tracking technology will be available for the 2014 season in 17 stadiums. Using RFID tracking chips on every player, the NFL will now be able to measure player orientation. This initiative, called “Next Generation Statistics,” will provide insights that will be available primarily on Thursday Night Football games shown on the NFL Network.

The implementation of RFID tracking chips will provide a statistical link between the players and the fans. The technology measures distance within motion-based systems. These chips will track players’ movements and positions wherever they are on the field. Talk about an interactive fan experience! This level of “Next Generation Statistics” occurs in real-time and provides a wide-range of data types which include:

·         Precise positioning data

·         Velocity

·         Acceleration

·         Run distance

·         Impact measurements

This data can be collected, processed, and presented to the audience in a matter of seconds, ultimately enhancing the football experience. It makes you wonder…could this information potentially create a more perfect game of football?

The players and coaches will have the ability to see exactly what occurred in any particular play, and giving them information to make the necessary changes for improvement. No more questions about who made a mistake because information will be broken down into statistics that can be analyzed and dissected by coaches and fans alike. It will make for an exciting, interactive 2014 season for sure!

Big Data – Most Valuable Player                                                                                        

The NFL initiative is following both the NBA’s and NASCAR’s foray into using big data to augment the fan experience. In the case of the NFL, fans will have access to statistics previously unavailable, but also broken down in a spatially oriented way so the fan can actually understand what happened, to whom, how and where.

Converting huge volumes of collected data transforms the information into a meaningful set of numbers, revealing unexpected patterns and correlations. This provides an opportunity for fans to be more informed, as well as coaches and players who can make better decisions going forward.

However, just like any winning team, big data needs a quarterback. In this case, it would be analytics. Frequently we talk about big data as a singular “event” where data comes in and then back out as a usable source of information. However, without analytics, big data is well, just large amounts of data.

The winning team of big data and analytics has been a focus for NEC for some time. The combination helps make sense of the abundance of available data that reside within the enterprise and transforms it into trustworthy insight and advanced analytics for sustainable intelligence.

For the NFL, the use of big data and analytics will provide new perspectives from a variety of viewpoints right after the play takes place. Now, the game will be viewed from the inside out and millions of eyes will not only be watching, but they will be in on the action as well.

The technological advances of big data and analytics are providing us a more in-depth glimpse at the world we live in. Experiences that could never be fully understood before are now being displayed in detail through real-time big data and analytics.

To learn more about big data and analytics and how they can be used in your industry, check this infographic provided by NEC and Aberdeen Group – Predictive Analytics and Big Data: A Powerful Combination.