Everyone is Different, so Build that Experience

One of the most popular art exhibits of the new decade is a traveling show called ‘Immersive Van Gogh .’ In 29 cities just in the US (and many abroad), visitors walk through rooms covered in the Dutch painter’s most famous works. Unlike traditional museum exhibitions, the actual paintings are nowhere to be found. Instead, minuscule details of brushstrokes are projected onto the walls, dropping the viewer into a sea of sunflowers or impressionist stars. Art purists might sneer at this style of presentation, but the show’s designers have intuited an important characteristic of us humans: we want to connect.?

The problem for businesses large and small is that not all products are as inherently engrossing as the colorful paintings of one of history’s most famous artists, and (more significantly) no two consumers consume in quite the same way. Some people like to write, others to talk. Some situations benefit from augmented reality, while others work better with an audio signal. To pick just one method of connection is to deny true connection to everyone else’s preferences. So don’t.?

At Shockoe, we create experiences that work along every possible touchpoint a user might have with our client, including voice, touch, gesture, wearables, AI, virtual assistants, and AR. Many companies see a dilemma in deploying this type of emerging tech: it can either be stood up quickly but in isolation of other tech stacks, or it can be integrated with other tech stacks in a painfully-long process. We see this as a false choice. We craft scalable deployment plans that seamlessly integrate emerging technology with your existing infrastructure. The result is a multi-platform experience that connects, predicts and immerses. Each of these ideas is fundamental to MPX, so let me show you how each works.

Connect

Drivers know how egregious tolls can be. As commuters have switched from paying cash to using passes, tolls pricing has become opaque and even burdensome. We worked with Globalvia to change that by developing the Slora app. The most important step was to create a seamless onboarding experience: register your vehicle, add a license plate and card information, and you’re off. Slora users pay as they go and can even use it for rentals. It helps keep track of finances The My Trips section displays individual toll breakdown: time, date, location, and cost (toll + fees). It provides functionality to email receipts, making your monthly budgeting a breeze. By connecting the user’s car with the app, it takes all the guesswork out of commuting, improves drive times for everyone, and most importantly, it creates an ongoing daily experience that gives Globalvia crucial insight into user behavior.

Predict

When it comes to prediction, no company is better than Amazon. They are sitting on more user data than pretty much every other business in the world and as a result, they’re able to anticipate need with startling accuracy. If it’s a certain time of month or year or even day, they can tailor your homepage to show you what you were likely going to search for in the first place. They can predict that Colorado will need more Solo Stoves in February and move them from Ohio, which is experiencing a warmer winter than usual, making sure customers are able to get them with two-day shipping. The result is an e-retail experience that delivers what you want practically before you wanted it, and it’s built on multi-platform inputs like voice commands to Alexa, Prime Video selections and previous purchase history.

VCU’s Department of Music envisioned a tool that could help violin students maintain focus on the critical elements of effective musical study. Understanding student needs, and seeking innovative ways to support them, they turned to Shockoe for the creation of a digital practice companion: V-Coach . Through collaboration with departmental staff, we gamified the tool with ways for students to measure their progress, target areas for improvement, and improve their form/posture. Progress is measured differently for a prodigy than it is for a beginner, so a key aspect to this platform is predicting what will keep a student engaged and motivated to move forward. It is also essential that the platform provide the optimal interaction in any practice setting, whether that be just some sheet music and a digital metronome, or a full-on custom video recording management, custom playback tools, and a video annotation function to enable students to capture videos of their sessions.

Immerse

Ikea already set the table back in 2017 with Ikea Place . With this app, users can test IKEA's products in real time. The application features realistically-rendered, automatically scaled furniture placed perfectly in your living room. AR is, in many ways, the most immersive experience a user can have. By layering digital information on top of the existing world, the consumer sees everything through the same lens the brand sees that same world, connecting them in the deepest way possible. Of course, not all AR is created equal. In the future, there will be plenty of complaints about the visual obstruction frivolous implementations of AR will impose upon the user experience. But that shouldn’t take away from the possibilities of what it can do.

Let’s take another look at the Slora app. Imagine if, in addition to providing drivers with a seamless toll payment system, the platform also gave an AR heads-up display that showed all of the toll info in a corner of the windshield, along with other pertinent travel information, like accident or traffic reports. This would keep the driver’s eyes on the road instead of luring them to phone or dash screens, making the highway safer for everyone. It would also make the Slora app that much more essential and integrated into the daily life of the driver.

Before screens became a necessary aspect of our lives, paintings probably resonated at a deeper level with the viewer. A Parisian in 1894 would have stood before the impasto brushstrokes of Starry Night and felt the whirling mystery of space and our place in it. Maybe the painting itself has the same captivating ability with some people, but for most, it probably seems…boring. I hate to say this about a masterwork, but how we think about creativity is just different now. ‘Immersive Van Gogh’ bridges the gap between the old world and the new and shows how we can change the entire feel of a room with just a computer and some lights. The best mobile user experiences do the same. The question is, is your app just a painting?